Bob Schmonsees Has
A Tool for Better Sales

By THOMAS PETZINGER, JR.

"WE'VE NEVER done it that way before." In these hypercompetitive times, it's hard to believe people utter such words. Yet Bob Schmonsees of Falls Church, Va., hears that excuse with maddening frequency.

His small software firm, WisdomWare Inc., has developed a slick tool that makes salespeople better informed and more efficient. But it requires them -- and their bosses -- to do things just a little bit differently, and the wall of resistance looms high. "The good news is we've got something that's truly visionary," he says. "That's also the bad news."

But Mr. Schmonsees, 51 years old, as you'll soon see, has plenty of experience scaling huge obstacles. And although his story is intensely personal, it holds lessons for anyone facing an uphill climb in business.

As a high-tech sales manager in the 1970s, Mr. Schmonsees made a priority of protecting salespeople from the endless white papers, binders and other epistles churned out by marketing types. Each quarter, he condensed a mountain of documents into a pocket-size booklet that crisply summarized what a sales rep needed to know about the product, the market and the competition.

Then came disaster. A contender in mixed-doubles tennis and a former football star, Mr. Schmonsees was standing near a ski lift when an out-of-control skier rammed him. His legs were paralyzed. He would spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair.

Fortunately, he discovered a formula for his different world: Figure out the new rules for any activity, then take as many small steps as necessary to master those rules. After learning the physics of a tennis swing on wheels and the geometry of playing a second bounce (standard rules), he became the world's top wheelchair player over age 40.

NO NUMBER of steps, however, could change the behavior of others. The sudden wariness of his former colleagues drove him from the company he loved. Then came many crushing job rejections. But after landing in a junior supervisory position in software sales, he climbed to top marketing management. Later, switching to software vendor Legent Corp., he became global sales chief. "Finally, I was back to where I should have been," he says, though once again it had taken many small steps.

As always, he worked to keep his sales staff informed but not inundated. This was a losing battle by the 1990s, with electronic libraries of marketing material growing like digital kudzu. Pondering this problem one day in the shower, he thought back to those little leatherbound digests he used to hand out.

Why not put something like that online? Even more important, why not enable every piece of information to link with any other piece? That way, salespeople could assemble just the right combination of facts necessary for the task of the moment.

Moving forward with an engineering team, Mr. Schmonsees created the interactive equivalent of Cliffs Notes. While planning a call, a sales rep makes a few menu choices to identify the customer, the product and the like. One click creates the most up-to-date qualifying questions, another reveals how the competition stacks up, another reports the most common objections, still another suggests an "elevator speech" for precisely those circumstances. Though only a few concise sentences pop on the screen, detailed reports are just a click away.

Mr. Schmonsees left Legent in late 1995. But in his own effort at selling the new product, he ran smack into a powerful objection.

The issue wasn't training; that takes five minutes. Nor was it compatibility; WisdomWare works seamlessly with other front-office software. Neither has any customer winced at the price of $500 and up per user.

The problem was culture. WisdomWare requires marketing managers to write snappy summaries in addition to (or instead of) their beloved white papers. "We've never done it that way!" came the reply. "When this becomes part of your culture, it's a real competitive advantage," says Dan Gillis, president of SAGA Software, which embraces WisdomWare. "But it takes a real commitment."

THE CULTURE of the field force is another hurdle. Users love the encapsulated, up-to-date information that comes to the screen. But WisdomWare depends on those same users to provide intelligence from the field: what the competition is up to, for instance, and which pitches are getting the best and worst results. Sharing information? "We've never had to do that before!" came the cry.

Platinum Technology, for one, equipped its sales force of 1,000 with WisdomWare in January. And although efficiencies are already evident, too few salespeople are giving back information. Platinum's Glenn Shimkus is now searching for ways to reward contributors. "We have to change the culture so that power and rewards come from sharing information, not from hoarding it," he says.

With 20 employees, Mr. Schmonsees is grinding out orders one at a time, counting 10 customers to date. And despite the slow takeoff, the company's venture-capital backers are about to step up for another round. Eventually, the product will run on a hand-held, wireless device that sales reps will consult on their way into sales calls-then use to submit feedback on their way out.

Mr. Schmonsees concedes that the business, for now, is behind his expectations. "It's going to take some time to change the world," he says. But as a metaphor for business, his personal life encourages him. "I take pride in taking a lot of little steps toward a long-term vision," he says.