SalesVPI

What Really Creates Sales Excellence?

Dave Kurlan's blog raises this question in response to webinar invitations from Avitage and other companies. He makes good points, although I think it's hyperbole to suggest that these invitations "promise the solution to all of our sales problems".

His point is, "the only way to make them (sales people) better is through evaluation, training and development."

And I certainly agree that, "these (vendor) applications are far more effective when you've already worked with a sales force development expert, developed a sales process and developed your sales people."

But it also reminds me of the adage, "when you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail."

We use Dave's assessments, believe completely in sales process and have documented our selling process since 1998. Sales development should be seen as a continuous process, not a periodic event as some organizations do.

But is that all there is to creating sales excellence, to improving sales effectiveness?

"Competent" means "the state of being adequately or well qualified." It is a function of skill, knowledge and ability. "Effective" means "producing or capable of producing a desired effect." We focus on supporting sales performance with information, knowledge, content, tools and assistance that indeed make sales people more effective.

Our customers who are involved with a complex sale tell us that to help their sales people shift from product providers to consultative sellers requires support to help them take their skills and awareness and actually execute to produce the desired sales results.

After they've hired the right horses, worked on development and implemented a sales process, their sales people need help conducting better conversations. This goes beyond ability and skill issues.

Often this requires a "four legged sales call" where SEs (pre-sales engineers), product managers or sales managers are brought in for conversation support.

For over 12 years, customers have asked us to help them with remediation (coaching), call preparation and physical delivery of key messages to customers. They tell us sellers need:

• Selling messaging and diagnostic questions, especially given expanding sales bags and a more competitive environment;
• Compelling and relevant content to deliver messages that support the customer's buying process;
• Knowledge aids that help sales people prepare for sales conversations quicker and easier;
• Selling tools and aids that help them engage customers more effectively, especially over the telephone, and communicate proof points relevant to the value they can provide a prospect;
• Convenient, opportunity specific coaching to assist with strategy and provide actionable next steps.

Avitage provides a process to build sales communications that are aligned to, and in support of, conversations that occur at each stage of the sales process, relevant to different stakeholder types, business needs, value points, competitive context and industry factors, among others.

This process supports an organization's training, marketing, coaching and sales communication needs with coordinated messages, shared content, and cost effective deployment.

The long-standing rap on sales training is that it's deployed as a periodic event and the benefits atrophy as early as 90 days out. But skills training without supporting selling information means sales people (each) have to figure it out for themselves, resulting in wasted time, opportunities and inconsistent selling.

To become a "trusted advisor" means sales professional have to have knowledge, and access to information, that makes them an advisor in the eyes of the customer.

Selling is fundamentally about communication. Communication is about delivery. Delivery today occurs in far more ways than face-to-face conversations. More selling over the phone, especially in the early stages of the process, require new engagement methods. Selling is more collaborative and it is necessary to bring experts to the customer in timely and cost effective ways. Web meetings and multimedia vignettes help here.

Sales people need to develop and cultivate leads. Multimedia vignettes help capture customer attention, and capitalize on that attention with compelling delivery of messages. Lead nurturing involves customer education. Customer portals with relevant (multimedia) content help here.

After the challenges of getting prospects to engage, the next biggest challenges involve accelerating the buying cycle, creating and demonstrating value, closing business -- not losing to "no decision". While skills are essential to this process, they are not sufficient. Knowledge, content and new delivery methods are also essential.

Coaching vs. Training

This year we helped our colleague Rob Scanlon launch a truly unique sales coaching and benchmarking company and product called PrivateSalesCoach (www.privatesalescoach.com).

This has been a fascinating experience on several levels which I will share across a number of blogs:

• A product that assists sales people in convenient and non-invasive ways to improve their odds in specific opportunities
• Executed through a simple, web diagnostic, that in less than 10 minutes answering questions provides instant advice for account strategies and next steps
• Benchmarks sales efforts against a best practice standard
• Provides qualitative assessments for how opportunities are being worked
• Can be applied in both direct and channel selling
• Low cost, hosted and easily implemented

A product that initially provokes skepticism and incredulity -- indeed I almost missed the opportunity to assist with this project due to my own initial negative assessment.

Dave Stein had a similar reaction when I first described this product.

Through this work I've gained a heightened appreciation for:

• The challenge of launching something new into the cacophony of today's market
• The difference between coaching and training -- as well as distinctions about coaching
• The importance of coaching on sales performance
• The value of sales benchmarks for sales performance and coaching
• The value of multimedia vignettes for leveraged selling and support of customer advocates conducting internal enrollment conversations.

It will be interesting to see how open people are to evaluate an innovative way to gain an early advantage with something others don't yet have.

Sales coaching and benchmarking appears to be of high interest for sales managers today. There is just not enough time or bandwidth for managers to touch every opportunity. How does a manager quickly assess which opportunities in the large portfolio of deals really needs his attention? How much time does it take to diagnose each opportunity with each rep to get the information needed to help? How much of this assessment is based upon a documented standard vs. intuitive gut feel?

Pilots use a "flight check" to make sure they don't miss any important steps, despite years of flying. Doctors send us for x-rays and lab work before meeting patients. That way they receive technical confirmation of a diagnosis and can spend more of their valuable time prescribing remedies and treatment. Many doctors today use online diagnostic tools to research or confirm a diagnosis despite years of education far beyond that of the typical sales rep.

CRM systems give us quantitative insight to sales opportunities, but do little to reflect a qualitative assessment of how opportunities are actually being worked, or what could be done to improve selling of each opportunity.

As we continue to support this effort I'll report on these questions and other lessons.

Accessing Intelligence on Customers and Prospects

Jim Dickie's article in CustomerThink makes a strong case that good sources of content exist to help sales people better understand customers, especially the challenges they are facing.

His annual survey reveals 49.5% of participating firms surveyed reported that they needed improvement at thoroughly researching customers and prospects. His article suggests sources for assistance.

Over the past 18 months we've made significant progress in this area. Here are some of the tools our sales people use:

Landslide -- this is our basic selling environment which provides the essential contact information but more importantly, great tools to manage our selling process, activity notes, private individual portals, and great reporting and dashboards.

Inside View -- is integrated right into Landslide, so when working on an account or opportunity we see, with one click, summary company information, key people, key news, even job openings.

Stratascope -- for in-depth company research and simple, visual reporting on key business issues and financial realities along with competitive comparisons.

ZoomInfo -- for looking up contacts at target companies. We also use Jigsaw.

Linked-in -- getting better and better not just as a network and referral tool (VERY important), but for searching contacts at specific companies, and joining affinity groups to make referrals and company research even easier and faster.

Sales Genius -- for allowing sales to generate email campaigns quickly and easily to groups as well as individuals, and to track viewing of emails and links to programs and our websites. This helps us know who is really interested, and who (for whatever reason), never even viewed our communication.

Leadlander -- notifies sales reps when customers and prospects visit our website, and which pages they viewed. This helps us better understand areas of interest, but especially timing.

iCentera -- to manage all our documents in one central repository, and create customer and campaign portals to deploy relevant content to prospects and customers. Makes it easier than embedding content into emails, and convenient for customers to view content when they are interested. Tracks individual viewing and provides marketing aggregate data on how our content is used. Supports our "drip marketing" campaigns, and quick emails (with links to content) to individuals and groups.

These are the tools used by our selling organization and doesn't include the marketing tools.

Is Your B2B Marketing Helping or Undermining your Sales Organization?

B2B marketing organizations may be unintentionally undermining the credibility and effectiveness of their expensive and important direct sales professionals.

I'm talking about the "ICBM approach" of launching content over the heads of the sales organization directly to customers and prospects with whom sales people are actively engaged.

If a company has a direct sales force, and marketing is allowed to operate this way, it is unproductive and dangerous.

What message does this send?

1) We (marketing) are not aligned with sales
2) We don't really care what sales are up to
3) We know what the customer wants better than the sales person does
4) We don't trust sales to deliver our messages

I don't care for military analogies but this seems relevant: in previous wars, bombing campaigns were conducted primarily by dropping large numbers of dumb bombs from aircraft. This method accomplished some objectives, but was not precise and produced a lot of collateral damage. Modern warfare has used laser-guided missiles to more surgically attack precise targets with minimal collateral damage. The missiles are often guided by a soldier on the ground with a laser pointed at the target.

When marketing organizations prepare content so it can be easily selected and even tailored for individual customers, and delivered using the customer's preferred method by the sales professional, everyone wins.

Marketing controls the message, brand, and content while optimizing the impact on customers. Sales professionals use the content to create value for the customer. This improves the sales person's brand and image as a valuable resource for the customer and sets the groundwork for becoming a real (trusted) advisor. The customer experiences relevant content, delivered conveniently and at the right time, and an appreciation of the service provided by the sales professional.

This isn't hard to do. But it does require a different mindset and operating process on the part of marketing. Given the direct investment companies make in the their sales organization, and the amount of business they expect those resources to produce, at lot is at stake.

If marketing can accomplish the business revenue objectives going directly to the customer, they should, and the direct selling organization should be disbanded. But if a direct selling organization is required, marketing should help maximize the effectiveness of this expensive resource, and consider how any direct campaign will affect this objective.

Mindset for an Anemic Business Climate

In working with sales teams over the last few weeks -- our own, customers and prospects -- it's clear everyone is trying to assess the implications of the recent precipitous economic decline. Then, we'll determine how to respond (and this has me thinking of "re-sponse-able").

This is especially true for sales professionals who have to sell (sail) into these headwinds. For sales people, this starts with having the right mindset. We are committed to producing the number regardless of the general economic circumstances. The question is how.

Dealing with a severe business downturn seems similar to the stages of dealing with death. Most people have moved from denial and anger over the past couple of weeks into depression today.

I've applied this framework to develop the following which seems to be helpful both for our selling mindset and to use as questions with customers.

I'm using this to determine a prospect's mindset and likeliness to take action. But I'm also using it to prompt people to think beyond the current paralyzing state, or to refer me to people who are.

I see four stages we all could go through:

1. Deer in the Headlights -- most people are in this stage now, given we are only four weeks into the economic chaos. It is difficult to engage people at this stage, and we hear language like, "I can't even think about talking with you, we're locking everything down until we decide our strategy."

2. Fight or Flight -- people will have to decide whether to fight to find ways to win business and protect customers, or whether to retrench, hunker down and just weather the storm. Avoid the latter.

3. Take Ground -- some will determine now is the time to innovate their selling process, attack new market segments, or capture customers from marginal competitors who have hunkered down.

4. Prepare for the Rebound -- others will use the next couple of quarters to fix what is broken, implement better processes, work with target prospects so they are ready to capture business when the economic rebound hits. Those best prepared at that point will win more business sooner than competitors who have hunkered down.

Which of these strategies works for your organization? Use these as questions with your prospects to find the contacts who think the way that best aligns with your solutions.

This framework helps our selling mindset, prompts customers to think differently, and aligns us with those individuals who are willing to take action.