Pipelines start looking a little thin.  Executive Leadership applies pressure to Sales Management. Sales Management applies pressure to their teams. Sales Management applies pressure to Marketing.   Sales reps react.  Marketing reacts. Sometimes targets are reached,  sometimes they aren’t.

And when they aren’t?

Every [more...]]]> Anyone involved in a sales/marketing organization will recognize a familiar story…It goes something like this:

Pipelines start looking a little thin.  Executive Leadership applies pressure to Sales Management. Sales Management applies pressure to their teams. Sales Management applies pressure to Marketing.   Sales reps react.  Marketing reacts. Sometimes targets are reached,  sometimes they aren’t.

And when they aren’t?

Every story needs a hero and a villain.  Sales and Marketing start to point fingers.  Relationships deteriorate.  Trust erodes. Growth stagnates.  Heads roll.

So who is to blame?  It certainly varies – and usually depends on how each team reacts.

The typical sales reaction will likely be to take a long look at all of their prospects and try to press a little harder and get them to the next stage.  They’ll also dig a little deeper – prospecting, hitting the phones.   It’s an honest effort, and sometimes it pays off.  The typical marketing reaction is to ramp up the activity, spend a little more, get more creative with messaging, target bigger lists, explore new channels.  It’s an honest effort, and sometimes it pays off.  If these reactions are indeed typical, then most of the time both sales and marketing are working hard – and can hardly be labeled a villain.

But every story needs a villain, right?  If not Sales, if not Marketing, then who?

The lineup of potential suspects is not a short one – the product, seasonality, the competitive landscape, the economy…the list goes on.  In this tale, though, we’ll focus on a culprit that lurks behind the scenes, whose reach extends into everything Sales and Marketing do…Dirty Data.

Let’s take a look back at the “typical reactions” of Sales and Marketing groups under pressure.

Sales is grinding harder, making more calls, trying to get prospects through the funnel quickly.  Dirty Data obstructs all of these activities.  Reps dealing with records that are duplicative, incomplete, outdated, and/or inconsistent are wasting precious time; and time often makes all the difference between a won deal and a lost deal, or even getting a seat at the table.

Marketing is amplifying the number of campaigns, spending time and energy brainstorming new ideas and deploying them quickly.  Marketers are dealing with these same records… duplicative, incomplete, outdated, and/or inconsistent.  All of the effort they put into the campaign they deployed often misses the mark, because they have bad information, or not enough information to intelligently segment their targets.  Dirty Data strikes again.

Honest efforts from both Sales and Marketing have been compromised in one stroke by an inaccurate database, and we all know the effects of missed targets can be far-reaching.

It’s a tragic tale, but one that doesn’t have to end here.  Make sure tune in for Part II – we’ll discuss common issues in data, and what to look for to understand whether you have a data problem or not, and if so, how big?

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Recently I had a chance to read The Truth About Leads, [more...]]]> We had an opportunity to review an early release of this terrific book. And Jill Konrath of Selling to Big Companies recently had an opportunity to interview the author. If you enjoy this, we suggest you share it internally with your sales and marketing leadership team.

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Recently I had a chance to read The Truth About Leads, a new cut-to-the-chase book written by Dan McDade. He’s the CEO of PointClear, a company that does outsourced prospect development for B2B sales organizations. As you might imagine, he thinks, eats and breathes “leads.”

Since it’s such a hot topic today, I knew you’d want to learn more about his thoughts on lead generation. Enjoy my interview with him.

JILL: Why did you write the book “The Truth About Leads”?

DAN McDADE: It’s because the word “lead” is so misunderstood and that misunderstanding is so costly. Most companies find other words or phrases to replace the word “lead”. Qualified sales opportunity, sales-ready opportunity, marketing qualified opportunity, suspect, prospect, opportunity, pipeline and scores of other words or phrases are used to replace the word “lead.”

Why? Because the very word has developed a negative connotation. Leads are the life blood of any organization; the lack of clarity about what a lead is, how it should be generated, by whom and how it should be worked and tracked is what causes most companies to suffer setbacks or failure.

Too, the process of defining, generating, working and tracking leads is a lot more complex than most people think because there are a lot of moving parts and there are a lot of interactions between people that are missed and/or misunderstood.

I had to write a book because I simply could not stand back and watch so much money being wasted. If you are tired of watching your company or companies’ waste money, the book tells you what to do about it.

JILL: In The Truth About Leads, you talk about the gap between sales and marketing. Hasn’t that gap shrunk in the last several years?

DAN McDADE: The short answer is no. Marketing has been rendered powerless in most companies.This function is often seen as one dimensional, responsible for trade shows, advertising, brochures, websites and in some cases, social media. Marketing is given a meager budget and a mandate to generate an impossible number of leads.

The sales force, on the other hand, is frequently filled with people who are misused or wrongly deployed. Companies don’t capitalize on their sales people’s strengths. Instead, hunters (also called closers) are expected to generate leads and farmers (relationship specialists such as account managers) are expected to close deals. People are being asked to do what they aren’t good at—and the result of those requests is inefficiency and ineffectiveness. The responsibility for leveraging the strengths of the team starts at the top.

Finally, I believe that it is impossible to fix the sales side of the problem without first addressing the marketing deficiencies.

JILL: So what should companies do first?

DAN McDADE: I call it the Five-step Program to Close the Marketing Gap

1. Stop the carousel on marketing programs.

Take a look at all of your planned programs—advertising, trade show promotions, direct marketing, webinars—and stop or cut back the ones you can while you take the time to evaluate their effectiveness. Don’t keep the merry-go-round going just because they’re already started.

2. Plan to crawl, walk and run.

You will not be able to roll out tested marketing programs next month. No company can effectively impact current quarter results with current quarter marketing. Don’t try. Instead, plan carefully and execute thoughtfully for long-term sales success.

3. Pinpoint your market.

For example, one client used a market research firm that determined that the prospect universe exceeded 80,000 companies. That’s too much. After analyzing their business, we focused on the best 22,000 opportunities and we’ll continue to work the universe down based on the appropriateness of the fit and the potential margin to our client.

4. Test your market, media and offer before investing.

Before spending significant dollars on a marketing program, it is imperative that you test your list or database (market), the communication platforms you plan to use (media), and your price, package, terms, guarantee, differentiators, etc. (offer). Simple as this seems, it almost never happens. This simple, practical testing step can hugely impact sales and save tens of thousands of dollars.

5. Measure your results. If you do not have a process to track and measure the ROI of your marketing programs you are just throwing darts. Only by quantifying the success of each program can you know if your efforts are worthwhile. In fact, you may be surprised to find that anecdotal evidence does not align with the facts.

JILL: One of the chapters in your book is called “The Truth About Sales”.  Can you summarize that chapter for our readers?

DAN McDADE: First, there are some basic misunderstandings about managing a sales force:

1. Hunters, farmers and beaters.

Do you know what type of salespeople you’re hiring? Are you expecting hunters to beat? When you look at your sales force do you find 80 percent farmers and 20 percent hunters? If so, you’re not alone.

2. Sales methodology.

Most of the salespeople you hire to hunt today really do not know how. Regardless of which sales methodology you use, the key is to integrate it with reporting systems and to follow through and follow up. Event training simply does not work. A sales methodology has to become a way of life.

3. Sales motivation.

Do you want to know why there is never any movement in the forecast? Why is it that there does not appear to be any progress until an account is either won or lost? The first and main reason is that salespeople do what you pay them to do, not what you want them to do. Sales executives are driven by control, credit and compensation. All three of these elements are strong motivators that can quickly turn into de-motivators.

Sales reps want credit for everything. They will deserve credit if you can motivate them to comply with a true closed loop system that tracks prospects through the buying cycle (I suggest rewarding reps that do this). Sales executives will often hide the steps in the sales process between lead acceptance and close. They fear accountability and being blamed for a loss, so they provide little visibility (except for wins) unless they are forced to do so.

Managers who understand and manage on the basis of both the art and science of sales can greatly impact the outcome of sales opportunities.

JILL: Any last recommendations?

DAN McDADE: These are what I call the Final Words of the book:

Executive and C-level management owns responsibility for providing high level market, message and media strategic direction. If you are a C-level executive today, and have given your team the direction that “our market is the Fortune 500” or “we sell enterprise solutions” (as examples), then you may be partially responsible for gaps between expectations and actual results.

Tight, vertical and geographically defined markets are always necessary. Always. If you do not have a handle on this, from a deployment and message perspective, you are wasting time and dollars. The strategic-level messaging most companies use does not work.

If you cannot explain what you do with a simple story and/or analogy, you need to work harder on carefully crafting just what you need to say. Close to 95 percent of most marketing investment is wasted due to marketing’s focus on short-term leads and failure to value and capture the long-term leads.

Also, frequently lost is information about companies that are qualified, but have no immediate opportunity—valuable information that results from the process of finding short-term leads. Gathering market intelligence and applying the learning’s in the context of a thoughtfully planned nurturing program delivers significant return.

If you have an inside sales group, it is likely that they are either glorified administrators, or making 35 or fewer dials per day due to other pressing issues. That means that for every person you have in inside sales, every day you are settling for 65 percent less productivity than you should.

You can’t afford anything less than a dedicated group of trained professionals focused 100 percent on sales. An advocate is someone who will, without prompting, speak well of you and your company—and in essence, help you sell. Initiatives to keep customers happy can help you make money. Since buyer’s remorse starts the moment the deal is signed, the activities, events and programs designed to create advocacy need to start then too.

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Dan McDade, author of The Truth About Leads, founded PointClear in 1997 with the mission to be the first and best company providing outsourced prospect development services to companies with a complex sales process.

To learn more, visit PointClear.com, read his Sales Lead Generation Blog or follow him on Twitter.

Thanks to Brent Holloway for this guest post. Brent is a regional sales director for Verint Systems Inc. and coauthor of “Sales 2.0.”

According to CSO Insights data, [more...]]]> The B2B Sales Lounge is a big fan of Anneke Seley of the Sales 2.0 Advocate. Contact info at end of post. The original post can be found here.

Thanks to Brent Holloway for this guest post. Brent is a regional sales director for Verint Systems Inc. and coauthor of “Sales 2.0.”

According to CSO Insights data, fewer reps are achieving quota, yet quotas, on average, are going up. At this time of year, many of you may be looking at your headcount and budget plan for 2011 and evaluating which members of your existing sales team should be counseled to find a new job. With more reps falling short, what should we sales managers do with reps who are not cutting it? This is, of course, a subjective question, and the right answer depends on many factors, but I feel it’s fair to suggest we should all have a methodology and process to follow — not just for a termination process, but also for the time leading up to a possible termination.

Performance improvement plans, or PIPs, are often given to sales reps who are performing below expectations. By integrating Sales 2.0 principles into your PIPs, you can optimize the opportunity to turn around and improve the performance of a rep who may be struggling. Here are four suggested steps for PIPs:

1. Have a process. After X quarters in a row (X will depend on your company), present your PIP. Be clear about how long the rep has to turn around his or her performance. Set a clear expectation about the time-frame.
2. Know your team’s best practices, and share them early and often. Give under-performing reps every chance of success by giving them specific ideas for how to improve.
3. Include measurable objectives. Your PIP should give reps specific and attainable metrics you have identified as necessary for achievement. This could include number of weekly calls and number of demonstrations, as well as goals related to adding new pipeline and booked orders.
4. Get feedback from your reps. You can increase their buy-in if they are included in setting the goals.

Based on feedback from some of my peers across a wide range of companies, general consensus seems to be that, while PIPs are positioned as tools to help an employee succeed, they are often viewed — and used — as tools to justify termination and prevent lawsuits. I believe PIPs can serve both objectives, with an emphasis on giving the employee every reasonable opportunity to succeed — if they are written fairly and presented well.

Presumably your sales reps know what is expected of them based on their compensation plan; the objectives in a PIP, when necessary, are often more tactical. A PIP can also be used as a commitment test, giving a rep a chance to “self-select” and resign before getting fired if he or she is not committed to improving.

I have experience giving a few PIPs, and one recent one resulted in a successful turnaround. This may not be the norm, but I feel it’s worth celebrating and sharing. After two years of consistently missing his quarterly goals (sometimes by a little and sometimes by more than 50%) and being at the bottom of his peer group, an employee was given a formal PIP at the start of Q4 of last year. The plan had clear pipeline-building and revenue objectives, and the rep is now thriving with three straight quarters of excellent results. I can’t give all the turnaround credit to the performance improvement plan, but from eight missed quarters to three good ones in a row, plus good progress so far this quarter, the plan clearly had a role. I think it forced him to focus more, and it was clear that he became more proactive and creative in his selling.

How are other people using PIPs? How do you determine the appropriate time to present one?

Interested in B2B lead generation and marketing? Then visit our other blog, Fearless Competitor.

Contact info:

Anneke Seley

aseley@phoneworks.com

(415) 986-6300

linkedin.com/annekeseley

twitter.com/annekeseley

Brent Holloway

brent.holloway@verint.com

We love comments and respond to every one. We also invite you to share this with others on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Digg, Delicious, etc.

Want to know how powerful story-telling really is. Check out the top-selling author and management guru, Tom Peters here.

According to the latest neuroscience, the normal, non-autistic, human brain organizes EVERYTHING into stories, [more...]]]> Having sat though many mind-numbing presentations, I found this post by Geoffrey James spot-on. If you want to see his original post, click here.

Want to know how powerful story-telling really is. Check out the top-selling author and management guru, Tom Peters here.

According to the latest neuroscience, the normal, non-autistic, human brain organizes EVERYTHING into stories, because that’s how we understand the meaning and context of everything around us. Because of this, the best sales presentations ALWAYS tell a story.

But how do you do that?  One way is to borrow some story telling from Hollywood and start each story with something interesting, introduce characters with whom the audience can relate, and then make sure you have a satisfying ending.

For sales presentations, that means following these three rules:

1. RULE #1: Starts with an “heart-stopper.” Every movie, TV show, or novel starts with something that captures your attention (i.e. captures your emotions) and holds your interest while you “get into” the story.  Without a “heart stopper,” the audience’s mind will wander.  Trust me.
2. RULE #2: Talk about the audience… not about you. The story connects emotions to the audience’s current situation so that that a decision becomes inevitable. You (or your firm) can play a “best supporting actor” role, but the main role is always the audience and what happens (or might happen) to them.
3. RULE #3: Ends with a “risk-remover” and a “close.” The risk-remover eliminates any remaining reluctance to make a decision.  The “close” pushes the audience over the edge and essentially forces them to make the decision, right now.

Here’s an example.SLIDE

• SLIDE: “$100 million”
• SCRIPT: (Pause for five seconds.) Yes, $100 million dollars. That’s what you lost last year. [This is the "heart stopper"]

• SLIDE: “Inventory Problems” [This introduces the characters and the plot.]
• SCRIPT: According to the research that I’ve conducted with your team, your companies inability to track inventory has resulted in the defection of three large customers and several smaller ones. The total amount of revenue from those accounts was on $20 million, but the reputation that you’ve gotten in the industry has lost you additional sales. In fact, $100 million is probably a conservative estimate.

• SLIDE: “Lost Market Share”
• SCRIPT: If the current trend continues, there’s no doubt that you will be losing marketing share to your competitors. This will allow them to apply economies of scale that your company will eventually be unable to match. Worst case, you could go into a downward spiral where you become successively less competitive.

• SLIDE: “Controlling Inventory”
• SCRIPT: The challenge with inventory control isn’t just getting costs under control; it’s turning your inventory into a competitive advantage. Here are some examples of companies that have not just managed to reduce their inventory costs, but used a shortened supply chain and just-in-time inventory to gain new customers….

• SLIDE: [Simple Table]
• SCRIPT: “Here is the topline of a spreadsheet that I’ve worked up with the help of Joe in accounting that shows how an inventory control solution can gradually get expenses in line and increase sales revenue. You’ll note that the bulk of the cost savings comes within three months of installation, but then there’s a follow-on effect of increased revenue.”

• SLIDE: “ROI” [this is the "risk remover"]
• SCRIPT: The most attractive element of this solution is that it virtually pays for itself within the first three months. Note that this ROI does not include the incremental revenue that you’ll be making in years 2 and 3.

• SLIDE: “Next Steps” [The close, of course]
• SCRIPT: As soon as we get the go-ahead, we can have this system installed within three weeks. I’ve already met with your technical guru to ensure that it’s fully compatible with your existing infrastructure and our engineers have pre-qualified your system for an easy install.

• SLIDE: Questions
• SCRIPT: I’m happy to answer any questions that you’ve got.

Needless to say, you’ll need to be plenty of data and reality behind the various points in the story.  And, for this to work in a sales situation, you’d have to meet one-on-one with many of the participants to get your ducks in a row, as they say.

Even so, this is the kind of presentation that’s going to create emotion and persuade the audience to make a decision.  And it’s certainly going to work better than the dull stuff that most people throw up on the screen.

Are you ready to tell stories in YOUR presentations?

We love comments and respond to every one. We also invite you to share this with others on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Digg, Delicious, etc.

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The Phoenix Effect

Looking back [more...]]]>

Kevin Temple of Enterprise Selling is a good friend of the B2B Sales Lounge. With the recent difficulties in the selling environment, we thought this article would be timely and helpful. If your interest lies in improving the flow of quality sales leads, check out iSell and our other blog, Fearless Competitor.

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The Phoenix Effect

Looking back at the previous economic downturn can shed some light on our opportunities during the current economic crisis. When the dot com bubble burst a few years ago, two companies weathered the resulting economic storm much better than could have been predicted.

Cisco Systems was at the heart of the Internet economy. Being the leading provider of networking equipment not only put them in the heart of the internet growth cycle; it also put them at the higher end of the risk spectrum when the cycle retracted. After the dust settled, however, Cisco only had a 15% drop in revenue from 2001 to 2002; better than most of the internet dependent market. This feat of leadership could easily go unappreciated until it’s compared to the competition: 3Com and Nortel both suffered revenue drops of over 40% during the same time period.

In a parallel story, Dell Computers also rode the internet growth cycle with impressive results. However, when the rug was pulled out, they too recognized a slowing demand for their flagship products; personal computers. But their retraction and subsequent growth profile looks even more favorable. Dell’s revenue dropped 2% year to year during the retraction, but rebounded over 13% in 2003. In contrast, Compaq experienced a 21% decline.

So the question is, what did Cisco and Dell do to avoid the significant calamities that other companies suffered?

To answer this question, let me start with what we didn’t see.

Sales Weaknesses Revealed

When the economy is healthy, and demand is up for new business solutions, a variety of sales skills usually suffer from neglect. This is not a critique on any particular organization; it’s simply a matter of which effort brings the highest return. In Cisco’s case, during the run up of the Internet market surge, demand was so strong for their products that their sales teams rarely engaged customer stakeholders outside of the customer’s IT organization. Related to this, they also rarely took the time to gain an understanding of the customer’s business challenges or help the customer contact justify the purchase with return on investment discussions. Their time was best spent educating their customers on the latest products, negotiating contractual commitments, and managing the quarter end closing drill to higher and higher levels.

Dell was no exception to the lack of sales discipline across the board during the internet run up. The “1-800″ business model which created a multi-billion dollar enterprise developed strength in marketing advertising, catalog distribution,custom product configuration and fulfillment. The demographic of their sales force was largely recent college grads that entered a culture dominated by a clock, visible in all call centers, displaying the time a customer was placed on hold while waiting to order. Responsiveness was valued most of all.

Like the first example, skills like gaining access to key stakeholders, developing financial justifications, or creating need for complimentary products were not highly valued skills at Dell during the run up. Nor were they necessarily needed.

Leadership

When the market retracted, both organizations recognized that passively riding out the storm was not an option. Without delay, Cisco implemented a leadership driven campaign to adjust their sales behavior in light of the slowing market conditions. When they engaged my services, they were well versed in their strengths and weaknesses.

They knew they needed to break their dependency on the I.T. sponsor and gain access to the business unit “real” customer to overcome the general spending freeze that a large number of their best clients imposed. They also cited the lack of skill in selling other products and services outside of the main switch and router product lines. In other words, they felt that they were leaving money on the table by not selling other products that might be applicable to the customer’s situation.

But now they had the motivation to take action on the situation.

With the help of many senior executives in the company, we jointly created an initiative to sell internet business solutions directly to the business unit management of their customer targets. The rationale was that even during spending freezes, a company still spends money. They simply do a more diligent job of prioritizing where they spend their money. Cisco’s job was to create need for their solutions with the business unit decision makers that were in the best position to prioritize a purchase of networking solutions.

The initiative was very successful. The early wins included a 300% increase in the post meltdown pipeline. And they cited many examples of large opportunities that came out of the ashes of spending lockdowns.

On Dell’s side, they were also equally adept at describing the skills that were not valued during the good times. They realized that their culture created a very responsive organization that was lax in need creation skills. Previous attempts to introduce other products were described as lackluster, at best.

I was asked to help Dell execute on a leadership campaign to integrate a wider array of new, related products into their sales opportunities. One of the key results of the campaign was a dramatic increase in the “attach metric”; a measurement used to track the sales of servers, storage and services. Currently, these other products now account for over $14 Billion in additional revenue, contributing over 23% of the total $61 billion in 2008 revenue. Not a bad payoff for an initiative born out of crisis.

The Devil is in the Details

The summaries of the leadership success of Cisco and Dell in their rebound efforts following the popping internet bubble may sound like it was easy, but both cases required a significant amount of leadership to produce a return on their respective initiatives.

Here’s a high level list of the types of leadership steps they implemented to produce a major change in sales behaviors:

o Develop the Vision

o Brand the initiative

o Train the troops

o Define early wins and communicate success

o Re-align the environment

o Remove Obstacles

o Upgrade the team

For the remainder of this article, I’ll expand on each item, however, initiatives of this complexity can consume far more paper for the overall plan that this short article will use if you decide to print it out. For this reason, I’ll footnote this section with an acknowledgment that I will probably under serve each topic simply because the length and scope of this article isn’t intended to concisely relay the particulars. Please refer to our other white papers on sales transformations for more information.

Develop the Vision: Although it seems like a simple task to diagnose the situation and communicate a solution, there are several opportunities for the process to get off on the wrong foot. Most important is to ensure that enough of the senior management is bought into the initiative to support the transition. According to sales people, one of the key reasons they resist a change in behavior is when they detect their superiors don’t walk the talk.

An effective visioning process should include a group effort with the entire senior sales leadership contributing to the definition of the objective, problem statement and solution strategy. It’s very common for an initiative to die for lack of buy in from the same leaders that would be responsible for overseeing the execution of such an initiative.

Another critical aspect of the visioning step is to communicate the vision in terms that represent the company as well as the individuals who will be called on to make changes in their daily behavior. If the sales person on the street does not understand why they should change, they will find ways to passively or actively resist the campaign.

Lastly, it’s all too easy to under communicate a leadership initiative. In his ground breaking book, “Leading Change”, John Kotter estimates that failed leadership initiatives under communicate by factors of 10, 100 or 1000. One memo is not enough to support the communication requirements of a behavior changing initiative.

Brand the Initiative: There is a significant value in branding the initiative with a catchy phrase, icon or other simple labeling option like an easy to remember acronym. If the branding is effective, it will conjure up the entire vision statement each time it’s used so that the participants are regularly reminded about the objective, the problem and the solution without having to reiterate the details.

Train the Troops: Behavior change begins with awareness, but the recipe also requires a skill development component. Where ever possible, use training that not only conveys the concept, but allows the participants to develop the new skills with relevant exercises. When using outside resources, it’s important to ascertain their ability to customize the skill development exercises to your products, your customer situations and your sales skill challenges.

Early Wins and Communicate Success: If the objective for the initiative is something that will take some time to achieve, it’s critical to define some early wins that indicate your team is on the road to success. For instance, if your objective is to increase revenue growth by 15%, the results may not show for a quarter or more. Pick a set of early wins that indicate you’re on the road to success; perhaps a pipeline increase or forecasted orders for a new product for example. Select something that can be achieved sooner than the overall goal, but is truly a stepping stone on the way to success. Then take the time to acknowledge, communicate and celebrate the success.

Realign the Environment: When a company matures over the course of many years, the systems, processes, and cultural norms form to support expected behaviors. If new behaviors are identified as crucial, the environment should be analyzed for realignment opportunities. Examples might include forecasting terminology or milestones, marketing messaging topics, communication formats, meeting agendas, previously acceptable cultural norms and more.

Remove Obstacles: Although the topic above is a form of obstacle identification and removal, in this section I’m referring to people obstacles. Every significant transformation of behavior will have its fair share of detractors; people who don’t want to change, and will passively or actively resist the change. In some cases, they form coalitions, groups of people resisting the change and working together to undermine the initiative. The critical action for the leader of the initiative is to identify the detractors, attempt to neutralize their stance, win them over, or remove them. Sales people are very adept at “waiting out” leadership initiatives. Nothing short of a direct focus on this issue will provide any relief.

Upgrade the Team: There are two facets to this concept. The first is to communicate expectations for required skill levels, provide development opportunity, measure, and deliver feedback. In other words, upgrade the skills of the team. The second facet incorporates the process of replacing members who are incapable or unwilling to improve their own skills.

Skills and Leadership

In both the Cisco and Dell situations, the skills that were not valued during a growing economy, but became especially critical during the retracting economy included:

o Creating need for other products.

o Accessing influential stakeholders outside of the infrastructure group.

o Uncovering impact to help the customer justify and prioritize the purchase in economic terms. Sometimes referred to as ROI selling skills.

o Preparing proposals that speak for themselves. A price quote might suffice in a growing economy, but a persuasive business proposal is required to pass the muster of a penny pinching sign off authority.

But skill development alone is not enough to change behavior. Consider all of the forces that work against the individual who needs to change:

o Customers push the seller to present product capabilities, limit access to decision makers, and may not understand the impact enough to create their own justification.

o Many company’s have product training that does just that, providing training on product features, not customer usage situations that would benefit the seller in creating need, building justification and establishing executive level credibility.

o The sellers own comfort zone is an impediment to change, especially if has worked for him or her enough to make their quota goals in the past.

o If your website and key marketing collateral are hyping product capabilities, but you want your sales teams to call on executives, there is an opposing force in play.

The list is actually longer, but the point is that leadership is the critical ingredient in causing sales behavior to change. More specifically, leadership is required to help the team overcome the obstacles that stand in the way of changing behavior. Creating and communicating the vision, role modeling expected behaviors, defining early wins, removing obstacles, navigating resistance and revamping the team are all leadership skills. I often suggest that skill training is less than 10% of the requirement to cause behavior change. When contrasted with the other leadership activities required to bring about change, the actual training event is a small portion of the overall pie.

So if your team could benefit by augmenting their selling skills during this difficult market, this article is intended to encourage you to consider the leadership planning and execution that will be required to help them benefit from the change. A majority of failed sales transformation efforts can be traced back to underestimating the scope of the leadership contribution required. Just remember that behavior change is 90% leadership!

What do you think? We love comments and you sharing on social networks.

Getting qualified visitors to your website is only half the battle. The other half of the equation is converting those visitors into qualified leads. To earn a positive return on your website investment and to support your sales team, you [more...]]]> By Jon Baer (bio and contact info at end of post.)

Getting qualified visitors to your website is only half the battle. The other half of the equation is converting those visitors into qualified leads. To earn a positive return on your website investment and to support your sales team, you need to have a strategy that gets those visitors to take an action on your website—to “raise their hand” and let you know where they stand in the sales cycle.

This article discusses the different types of offers you may consider placing on your website for conversion purposes.

Generally speaking, there are five types of visitors who will visit your website:

1. Visitors who are educating themselves on industry trends:

These folks haven’t yet identified a business need, but they’re curious to “see what’s out there.” They’re trying to answer the questions “What are some of the technologies that are out there that can help my business?” and “What am I missing out on?” They know they need to do something, but they’re not quite sure what that is yet. Maybe they know, for example, that they need to do a better job optimizing their website organically for the search engines. Maybe they know they need to invest in a CRM system, but they aren’t sure how to narrow down the list of all the possible options.

Generate Leads from Your Website 3 Things Buyers Want on Your Website Make Your Website Work More So You Can Work Less 7 Ways to Use Website SEO to Drive New Business

For these people, offer them access to your electronic newsletter. Have a short (just email address) form with a privacy statement to encourage them to educate themselves via your content. When they’re ready to take the next step in the sales cycle, hopefully the valuable content and education you provide will encourage them to seek you out.

2. Visitors who are early in the sales cycle:

Maybe these people have heard of your company or perhaps they arrived at your site via a keyword search. These folks have a business issue they need to solve, but they aren’t ready to “pull the trigger.” They’re still trying to identify the right solution and the right firm to provide that solution. An offer to subscribe to your enewsletter will appeal to these visitors, as will case studies that demonstrate how your solution helped other businesses. How much research they’ve done and how close they are to being ready to buy will determine which offer they choose. The bottom line is that the content provided by the offer is what drives these folks.

3. Visitors who know their business issue and have narrowed down the solution to a variety of vendors:

These folks need validation. They need to know that your solution works. They want to see that others like them have used your solution to successfully address a business issue. In terms of offers, the best content to provide these visitors is case studies. Place some teaser text next to the offer, such as “Learn how ABC Company, a global manufacturing company, saved $XX via our service.” Or you could provide a short summary of the case study. Require the visitor to complete a short form to access the entire case study. For these visitors, you should feel comfortable asking for more information than what you asked of the visitors described in category one above because the content you’re providing is valuable and specific to their needs.

4. Visitors who have done the research, know what they need, but aren’t quite ready to talk to a salesperson:

These visitors are looking for more information about your service or product. If you sell services, provide details about your services. What value do you provide? How do your services—and you—differ from other providers?

If you sell products, an online demo will appeal to this type of visitor. They have probably narrowed down their list of vendors to a few and before talking with a salesperson wants to see how your solution works. They want to see the user interface or get an idea of how easy the product is to install or use.

These visitors don’t want to speak with a salesperson yet because although the service or product has earned a spot on their short list, they’re still not convinced it’s the right solution for them. In their minds, they don’t want to be “bothered” by a sales rep. These folks are transactional in nature rather than educational like visitors in categories one, two, and three.

5. Visitors who are ready to speak with a salesperson:

Offer these folks a short form that says something like “Got a question?” or “Please contact me.” Don’t make the mistake of trying to have this form do too much. Many people make the mistake of having long forms, thinking that the form rather than the salesperson should do the qualifying. Remember: web browsers are impatient, so don’t ask too many questions. Let the salesperson do the qualifying. If the form is too long, resulting in a high exit rate, then you’ve lost out on the opportunity to speak with a qualified lead.

The vast majority of visitors to your website are composed of visitors one, two, and three. Many people make the mistake of providing offers that cast a very narrow net. If the only offer on your sub-pages is “fill out this form for a demo,” think of all the visitors who are not ready to respond to this offer. You must, therefore, have offers that appeal to all visitor types on all your sub-pages.

This page does a good job of providing offers that cast both a wide and a narrow net.

1. The White Paper and Analyst Report bar in blue at the top of the right hand column are perfect for those visitors who fit into categories one and two. They’re early in the sales cycle, but if they see that Gartner, a well-known analyst, favorably mentions ATG’s solution, these visitors will then be pushed along the sales cycle and be more likely to read the documents listed in the “Learn More” box.
2. The offers contained in the “Learn More” box just below the blue box in the right hand column, are perfect for visitors who fit into categories three and four because these visitors have already decided that they have a need that may be solved by ATG’s solution, otherwise they wouldn’t have arrived on this page. These documents further educate the visitor on ATG’s product and hopefully answer the visitor’s question, “How does ATG specifically address my business issue?”
3. The Contact ATG offers at the bottom of the right hand column are perfect for those visitors in category five. Both make it extremely easy for the visitor to raise his hand. ATG has embraced another good practice, which is to give the visitor choices in terms how he wants to be contacted.

Remember that visitors to your website are in different stages of the buying cycle. You cannot treat all of them the same. To prevent leads from falling through the cracks, make sure you have offers that appeal to all of them.

What do you think? We love comments and you sharing on social networks.

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You know what your prospects are thinking — all the time? Every time you interact with them, they’re evaluating you [more...]]]> By Jill Konrath (who gave us permission to use this article. thanks Jill!) See below for Jill’s contact info. Also, Jill’s a great speaker – for your next sales meeting. That link is below too.

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You know what your prospects are thinking — all the time? Every time you interact with them, they’re evaluating you and asking themselves: “Is this a person (company) I want to work with on a long-term basis?”

If they feel pressure from you, the
answer is no.

If they feel like you’re trying too hard to be liked, the answer is no.

If they don’t think you understand their business, the answer is no.

If they get overwhelmed by what you’re saying, the answer is no.

So what makes them say, “Yes, I want to work with you!”

To be most effective in sales today, it’s imperative to drop your “sales” mentality and start working with your prospects as if they’ve already hired you. When you do, it shifts your relationship to a whole new level from the very start. (BTW, iSell by OneSource helps you gain insights into your prospects.)

Case in point. Several years ago a regional engineering firm contacted me about helping with an upcoming presentation. They’d been invited to make a presentation to a buying team, along with five other companies. As a regional firm, they were delighted to be included with all the industry giants.

When I first met with the lead engineer and business developer, they truthfully didn’t believe they could win the business. Their goal was simply to make the final three. They asked me to help them make a good showing. (Of course, my goal was to help them win!)

We began by reviewing the Request for Proposal (RFP) that the prospect had issued. They wanted tons of information about the company, its background, their qualifications, clients, and more.

It was clear to me that their competitors were going to come into that meeting with a whole deck of PowerPoint slides and cover that information in excruciating detail. Borrrrring!  And just imagine their prospects having to sit through six of those presentations in one day.

I told my client, “We’re going to do something different. Your job is to go into the meeting as if they were already your customers.”

They didn’t understand what I meant. I explained it more: “Let’s assume they gave you the contract. What would you do next?” ”

Well,” they said. “We still have lots of unanswered questions based on reading their RFP. Plus, it seems like there are some contradictions. And, we’re not exactly sure that what they’re asking for is the best way for them to achieve their goals.”

“Great!” I answered. “Then that’s what your meeting will be about.”

Flash forward two weeks.

My clients flew to Chicago for the big meeting—their one and only chance to make it to the finals. They entered a room, filled with stern-faced decision makers seated grimly around the table. Clearly these people were already bored to tears.

To kick off the meeting, my client said:

“All the information you requested about our company is in this handout. We’ll gladly answer any questions you might have about it.

“But what we’d really like to do today is focus more on your challenge and what it’s going to take to resolve it. We have some questions that we believe may have an impact on achieving your desired outcome.”

With that opening, he caught their undivided attention. The first slides focused on their current situation. My client asked pre-planned questions on vital topics to verify his understanding of the status quo and learn more in-depth information. These simple-to-answer questions were designed to get the prospects talking.

After that, my client brought up several key issues they’d uncovered in reviewing the RFP. This led to a discussion on root causes versus presenting symptoms.

My client then offered new ways to tackle the problem that were less disruptive. Finally, they challenged the prospects’ thinking on some “must have” criteria, suggesting options they thought might work better. This stirred up another highly engaging conversation.

In short, they started working on this $400,000 project during their presentation.

The results? Remember, my client hoped to make it to the final three and had never even competed against the biggies before.

But the actual outcome was even more surprising. Instead of going to a second round of more intensive presentations with the finalists, my client was awarded the contract within the week. Because everyone on the committee wanted to work with them, they canceled their final presentations.

So many people are afraid to give away their ideas before a contract is signed. But often that’s the best way to win the business.

What would you do for a customer that you’d never think about doing for a prospect?

Are you holding back something because you’re afraid they’ll steal it? Are you approaching your meetings as a chance to really “strut your stuff” or are you getting to work?

For many sellers, this is a new concept. Think about how you can be more collegial — even before you start working together. It’s worth it.

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Jill Konrath, author of SNAP Selling and Selling to Big Companies, helps sellers crack into new accounts, speed up sales cycles and land big contracts. She’s a frequent speaker at sales conferences. For more fresh sales strategies that work with crazy-busy prospects AND to get four bonus sales-accelerating tools, visit www.snapselling.com.

SPEAKING OF SALES >
Planning Your Upcoming Sales Meeting, Kick-off Event or Conference?

Working with today’s crazy-busy prospects presents a whole new set of sales challenges. It’s tough to get in when you can’t make contact with anyone. It’s tough to get them to change when the status quo is easier. It’s tough to get chosen when they can’t differentiate. New strategies are needed today. Jill’s highly interactive, content-packed sessions focus on helping sellers crack into new accounts, speed up sales cycles and land big contracts.

Get Jill on your calendar now. For more info, send an email to Jill, call 651-429-1922 or visitwww.jillkonrath.com

If you’re interested in growing quality sales leads, please also visit Fearless Competitor, our B2B marketing blog.

Don’t forget – How to Get Prospects to Choose You: Using trust, triggers and technology to drive better meetings

Wednesday, [more...]]]>

Kevin Temple is a top sales expert and a good friend of the blog author. You can visit Kevin at http://www.enterprise-selling.com Since the economy has been poor, we thought this particularly apropos. We hope you enjoy it.

Don’t forget – How to Get Prospects to Choose You: Using trust, triggers and technology to drive better meetings

Wednesday, January 26th at noon ET.

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The Phoenix Effect

by Kevin Temple

Looking back at the previous economic downturn can shed some light on our opportunities during the current economic crisis. When the dot com bubble burst a few years ago, two companies weathered the resulting economic storm much better than could have been predicted.

Cisco Systems was at the heart of the Internet economy. Being the leading provider of networking equipment not only put them in the heart of the internet growth cycle; it also put them at the higher end of the risk spectrum when the cycle retracted. After the dust settled, however, Cisco only had a 15% drop in revenue from 2001 to 2002; better than most of the internet dependent market. This feat of leadership could easily go unappreciated until it’s compared to the competition: 3Com and Nortel both suffered revenue drops of over 40% during the same time period.

In a parallel story, Dell Computers also rode the internet growth cycle with impressive results. However, when the rug was pulled out, they too recognized a slowing demand for their flagship products; personal computers. But their retraction and subsequent growth profile looks even more favorable. Dell’s revenue dropped 2% year to year during the retraction, but rebounded over 13% in 2003. In contrast, Compaq experienced a 21% decline.

So the question is, what did Cisco and Dell do to avoid the significant calamities that other companies suffered?

To answer this question, let me start with what we didn’t see.

Sales Weaknesses Revealed

When the economy is healthy, and demand is up for new business solutions, a variety of sales skills usually suffer from neglect. This is not a critique on any particular organization; it’s simply a matter of which effort brings the highest return. In Cisco’s case, during the run up of the Internet market surge, demand was so strong for their products that their sales teams rarely engaged customer stakeholders outside of the customer’s IT organization. Related to this, they also rarely took the time to gain an understanding of the customer’s business challenges or help the customer contact justify the purchase with return on investment discussions. Their time was best spent educating their customers on the latest products, negotiating contractual commitments, and managing the quarter end closing drill to higher and higher levels.

Dell was no exception to the lack of sales discipline across the board during the internet run up. The “1-800″ business model which created a multi-billion dollar enterprise developed strength in marketing advertising, catalog distribution,custom product configuration and fulfillment. The demographic of their sales force was largely recent college grads that entered a culture dominated by a clock, visible in all call centers, displaying the time a customer was placed on hold while waiting to order. Responsiveness was valued most of all.

Like the first example, skills like gaining access to key stakeholders, developing financial justifications, or creating need for complimentary products were not highly valued skills at Dell during the run up. Nor were they necessarily needed.

Leadership

When the market retracted, both organizations recognized that passively riding out the storm was not an option. Without delay, Cisco implemented a leadership driven campaign to adjust their sales behavior in light of the slowing market conditions. When they engaged my services, they were well versed in their strengths and weaknesses.

They knew they needed to break their dependency on the I.T. sponsor and gain access to the business unit “real” customer to overcome the general spending freeze that a large number of their best clients imposed. They also cited the lack of skill in selling other products and services outside of the main switch and router product lines. In other words, they felt that they were leaving money on the table by not selling other products that might be applicable to the customer’s situation.

But now they had the motivation to take action on the situation.

With the help of many senior executives in the company, we jointly created an initiative to sell internet business solutions directly to the business unit management of their customer targets. The rationale was that even during spending freezes, a company still spends money. They simply do a more diligent job of prioritizing where they spend their money. Cisco’s job was to create need for their solutions with the business unit decision makers that were in the best position to prioritize a purchase of networking solutions.

The initiative was very successful. The early wins included a 300% increase in the post meltdown pipeline. And they cited many examples of large opportunities that came out of the ashes of spending lockdowns.

On Dell’s side, they were also equally adept at describing the skills that were not valued during the good times. They realized that their culture created a very responsive organization that was lax in need creation skills. Previous attempts to introduce other products were described as lackluster, at best.

I was asked to help Dell execute on a leadership campaign to integrate a wider array of new, related products into their sales opportunities. One of the key results of the campaign was a dramatic increase in the “attach metric”; a measurement used to track the sales of servers, storage and services. Currently, these other products now account for over $14 Billion in additional revenue, contributing over 23% of the total $61 billion in 2008 revenue. Not a bad payoff for an initiative born out of crisis.

The Devil is in the Details

The summaries of the leadership success of Cisco and Dell in their rebound efforts following the popping internet bubble may sound like it was easy, but both cases required a significant amount of leadership to produce a return on their respective initiatives.

Here’s a high level list of the types of leadership steps they implemented to produce a major change in sales behaviors:

o Develop the Vision

o Brand the initiative

o Train the troops

o Define early wins and communicate success

o Re-align the environment

o Remove Obstacles

o Upgrade the team

For the remainder of this article, I’ll expand on each item, however, initiatives of this complexity can consume far more paper for the overall plan that this short article will use if you decide to print it out. For this reason, I’ll footnote this section with an acknowledgment that I will probably under serve each topic simply because the length and scope of this article isn’t intended to concisely relay the particulars. Please refer to our other white papers on sales transformations for more information.

Develop the Vision: Although it seems like a simple task to diagnose the situation and communicate a solution, there are several opportunities for the process to get off on the wrong foot. Most important is to ensure that enough of the senior management is bought into the initiative to support the transition. According to sales people, one of the key reasons they resist a change in behavior is when they detect their superiors don’t walk the talk.

An effective visioning process should include a group effort with the entire senior sales leadership contributing to the definition of the objective, problem statement and solution strategy. It’s very common for an initiative to die for lack of buy in from the same leaders that would be responsible for overseeing the execution of such an initiative.

Another critical aspect of the visioning step is to communicate the vision in terms that represent the company as well as the individuals who will be called on to make changes in their daily behavior. If the sales person on the street does not understand why they should change, they will find ways to passively or actively resist the campaign.

Lastly, it’s all too easy to under communicate a leadership initiative. In his ground breaking book, “Leading Change”, John Kotter estimates that failed leadership initiatives under communicate by factors of 10, 100 or 1000. One memo is not enough to support the communication requirements of a behavior changing initiative.

Brand the Initiative: There is a significant value in branding the initiative with a catchy phrase, icon or other simple labeling option like an easy to remember acronym. If the branding is effective, it will conjure up the entire vision statement each time it’s used so that the participants are regularly reminded about the objective, the problem and the solution without having to reiterate the details.

Train the Troops: Behavior change begins with awareness, but the recipe also requires a skill development component. Where ever possible, use training that not only conveys the concept, but allows the participants to develop the new skills with relevant exercises. When using outside resources, it’s important to ascertain their ability to customize the skill development exercises to your products, your customer situations and your sales skill challenges.

Early Wins and Communicate Success: If the objective for the initiative is something that will take some time to achieve, it’s critical to define some early wins that indicate your team is on the road to success. For instance, if your objective is to increase revenue growth by 15%, the results may not show for a quarter or more. Pick a set of early wins that indicate you’re on the road to success; perhaps a pipeline increase or forecasted orders for a new product for example. Select something that can be achieved sooner than the overall goal, but is truly a stepping stone on the way to success. Then take the time to acknowledge, communicate and celebrate the success.

Realign the Environment: When a company matures over the course of many years, the systems, processes, and cultural norms form to support expected behaviors. If new behaviors are identified as crucial, the environment should be analyzed for realignment opportunities. Examples might include forecasting terminology or milestones, marketing messaging topics, communication formats, meeting agendas, previously acceptable cultural norms and more.

Remove Obstacles: Although the topic above is a form of obstacle identification and removal, in this section I’m referring to people obstacles. Every significant transformation of behavior will have its fair share of detractors; people who don’t want to change, and will passively or actively resist the change. In some cases, they form coalitions, groups of people resisting the change and working together to undermine the initiative. The critical action for the leader of the initiative is to identify the detractors, attempt to neutralize their stance, win them over, or remove them. Sales people are very adept at “waiting out” leadership initiatives. Nothing short of a direct focus on this issue will provide any relief.

Upgrade the Team: There are two facets to this concept. The first is to communicate expectations for required skill levels, provide development opportunity, measure, and deliver feedback. In other words, upgrade the skills of the team. The second facet incorporates the process of replacing members who are incapable or unwilling to improve their own skills.

Skills and Leadership

In both the Cisco and Dell situations, the skills that were not valued during a growing economy, but became especially critical during the retracting economy included:

o Creating need for other products.

o Accessing influential stakeholders outside of the infrastructure group.

o Uncovering impact to help the customer justify and prioritize the purchase in economic terms. Sometimes referred to as ROI selling skills.

o Preparing proposals that speak for themselves. A price quote might suffice in a growing economy, but a persuasive business proposal is required to pass the muster of a penny pinching sign off authority.

But skill development alone is not enough to change behavior. Consider all of the forces that work against the individual who needs to change:

o Customers push the seller to present product capabilities, limit access to decision makers, and may not understand the impact enough to create their own justification.

o Many company’s have product training that does just that, providing training on product features, not customer usage situations that would benefit the seller in creating need, building justification and establishing executive level credibility.

o The sellers own comfort zone is an impediment to change, especially if has worked for him or her enough to make their quota goals in the past.

o If your website and key marketing collateral are hyping product capabilities, but you want your sales teams to call on executives, there is an opposing force in play.

The list is actually longer, but the point is that leadership is the critical ingredient in causing sales behavior to change. More specifically, leadership is required to help the team overcome the obstacles that stand in the way of changing behavior. Creating and communicating the vision, role modeling expected behaviors, defining early wins, removing obstacles, navigating resistance and revamping the team are all leadership skills. I often suggest that skill training is less than 10% of the requirement to cause behavior change. When contrasted with the other leadership activities required to bring about change, the actual training event is a small portion of the overall pie.

So if your team could benefit by augmenting their selling skills during this difficult market, this article is intended to encourage you to consider the leadership planning and execution that will be required to help them benefit from the change. A majority of failed sales transformation efforts can be traced back to underestimating the scope of the leadership contribution required. Just remember that behavior change is 90% leadership!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kevin_Temple

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