SalesVPI

Inside Sales Need Visual Support

In the B2B complex sale, more selling is occurring over the telephone than ever before. Whether part of a formal inside selling function, or as direct sales people working in the early stages of the customer engagement process, phone meetings and conference calls are the norm, not the exception.

Phone-based sellers can dramatically impact their customers and their sales effectiveness by delivering visual support to voice conversations with live web meeting technology.

For a decade we've heard from companies like Webex and Citrix that web meetings can give sales people a better way to conduct sales meetings without travelling to meet with customers.

Well, maybe, but I find myself frequently quoting from Lance Armstrong's autobiography, "It's Not About the Bike." It's not about the technology.

What's required to make effective use of web conferencing technology by inside sales?

1. Content. Specifically content that supports the conversations sales people have with customers. Without the right content, the technology is useless, or worse, it can become a negative experience for customers and frustrating for sales people.
2. Easy Access. Most visual content is created and stored as PowerPoint shows -- presentations. But a sales conversation is not a presentation. We need easy access to individual slides or groups of slides to address specific customer questions, to support a complex idea, or to deliver a proof point. We need to be able to do it quickly, almost without thinking. We don't have time to remember which deck has the slides we need, which directory they're stored in and to extract them so they can be presented.




3. Training and Support. We train people to have effective sales conversations over the telephone. Sales people need training and practice to comfortably use web conferencing during their sales calls. They need technical and technique call support in the early stages. A debriefing process should regularly identify missing but required content and quickly develop and update the repository.
4. Infrastructure Support. Unlike webinars and e-learning, many sales conversations are established in an ad hoc manner. Sales people and their customers need easy, instant access to web meetings, including minimal software downloads or plug-ins.

Visuals are engaging. They help not only message delivery, but message understanding. They help people "see" what we're talking about. Appropriate visual content, used correctly, make phone conversations efficient and effective.

But this shouldn't be left to sales people to figure out. A support program will pay rich dividends.

Sales VPs CEOs and the New Revenue Engine

Our business partner, Marketo, has been articulate promoting a shift in thinking in B2B selling organizations from a sales engine to a new revenue engine. This is an important read.

The key impacts of this shift include:

• Lower Customer Acquisition Costs
• Reduce Wasteful Spending --(reducing cold calls, direct and email blasts --IDC estimates 25% of sales time is spent on unproductive prospecting)
• More Predictable Sales Forecasts
• Greater Pipeline Stability

After many years of listening to the diatribe about the "marketing and sales disconnect," it's refreshing to hear solid discussion of a collaborative marketing and selling process that is focused on the common goal of revenue growth, aligned around the customer buying process, and addressing the questions customers must answer in order to solve their business problems and make a buying decision.

In the past I was among those from the sales side of the equation who thought "marketing didn't get it." For over twelve years we've worked with B2B selling customers, and sales consulting partners, to get marketing to assist sales in the shift from being "product providers" to becoming "consultative problem solvers."

The complexity of most B2B sales demands it. Not just because there are more and complex products (there are), or that there are more competitors, but because of the sales challenge of adequately preparing for effective conversations with a committee of buyers, each with different perspective, objectives and even language.

Higher margins, win rates and much more depend on this shift.

Sales doesn't have the time or expertise to figure all this out while responding to insatiable pressure for monthly closes.

But marketing wasn't prepared to provide this support. Perhaps most still aren't. But at least the marketing community is onboard, promoting sales enablement through more and better sales ready opportunities.

Sales VPs and CEOs

Now it's time for sales and senior executives to join the game. Too many senior executives are clueless about marketing, and especially the potential today's marketing practices have to "pressurize the revenue engine."

Sales costs for most B2B organizations are huge. Yields should be much better. Higher marketing costs, appropriately applied, can drive revenue growth AND lower selling costs.

Be sure to read the Marketo case study at the end of the New Revenue Engine Report.

How I Blew a Sales Layup

A layup is the easiest shot in basketball, if you're not able to dunk. But it's not unusual for a player to miss a layup. Why is that?

Most likely because they overlook fundamentals and fail to concentrate.

We recently had a sale not close -- neither lost nor won, just won't close. The customer has a significant and recognized need, high interest in our service, and our sales person has known and worked with the company previously. There was significant and acknowledged potential value from the service. The deal was a "no brainer."

So what happened?

We followed most, but not all elements of our sales process. As we performed our opportunity review post mortem I remembered something we had overlooked. We had neglected to perform an Opportunity Flight Check prior to submitting our proposal.

Our colleague, Rob Scanlon (www.privatesalescoach.com) has developed a unique and insightful program that assesses sales opportunity risk and makes recommendations for improving the odds of success.

In just 10 minutes, answering sequenced questions in five key selling dimensions, we receive a visual Flight Check of our strength and weakness within the opportunity.

Without any further information, look at our Flight Check and see if you can determine our areas of risk, and what ultimately did us in.

The Flight Check also provides written advice to help the sales team understand the implications of their status in each dimension, and to provide actionable recommendations. Here were ours.

Fit Advice

Since we have assessed that the prospect recognizes their problems, next we need to find out about their level of awareness concerning the solutions that solve those problems.

We can ask ourselves the following question: If the target prospect group were a patient seeing a physician, - on the standard pain scale of 1-to-10 – how would the prospect rate their pain?

“Mr. Prospect, you have indicated that X isn’t working as well as you would like. Not all imperfections are worth addressing. So we have found organizations at this point take one of two paths:

1. They examine the market and start looking for solutions to remedy the issue or
2. They just decide to live with it.

Where are you?”

People Advice

Having written down everyone who will decide and influence which company gets the sale, categorize each person on the list into one of three categories.
1. Supporter
2. Uncertain
3. Blocker

Urgency Advice

We need to use the platform of ‘educating’ them about the market to create an organizational vision for the impact of the solution.

The prospect needs to visualize the impact of the solution if there is to be any Organic Urgency.
• Organic Urgency is the organizational energy, focus, and will to act, generated because the organization visualizes the results. This is different and more powerful than Synthetic Urgency which is created by discounts, favorable terms, etc.

The potential impact is uncovered by asking the question, “What will this mean to the organization if X solution is implemented by mm/dd/yy with us or with someone else?”

Caution: It is important to include the phrase “with us or with someone else”. This phrase keeps the discussion on their needs and avoids to use of a Barrier Selling technique often employed by sales people who try to manipulate prospects rather than help them.

Selection Criteria Advice

It appears that the targeted prospect group does not have a clearly articulated or documented set of buying selection criteria.

This is an opportunity to shape their selection criteria. We can use the platform of educating them about the market as a vehicle to shape their beliefs and selection criteria.

When a targeted prospect group has not yet established a set of selection criteria, many sales professionals will see this as an opportunity to ‘pitch’ their differentiators. The ‘pitch’ is typically a parochial and often self-centered explanation identifying the reasons why the targeted prospect group should select the ‘pitched’ solution.

A ‘pitch’ is rarely the most effective method of influencing targeted prospect groups. These groups usually have keen radar that tracks when sales professionals are ‘pitching’ a set of capabilities and trying to manipulate the selection. It is transparent to the targeted prospect group that the sales person’s ‘pitch’ is simply a manipulation and that the seller is working their own agenda. Consequently, the targeted prospect group often discounts the ‘pitching’ sales person’s arguments and admonitions.

In contrast, we can better leverage the targeted prospect group’s lack of firm selection criteria by taking a more the disciplined and consultative approach.

We can ask for the opportunity to provide a more objective education to the targeted prospect group.
“How helpful would it be if we sat down with your team and provided a brief overview of the market and the different approaches taken in this area?”

Once given the opportunity, we then provide a brief and objective overview of the market without using the names of competitors and without criticizing them.

“There are a number of valid approaches in the market.
One approach is to do X. Customers take this approach usually to ____ (the key benefit of X approach)
Some organizations choose not to go down that path because of _____ (the key drawback of X approach)”
“Still another approach is to do Y. Customers take this approach usually to ____ (the key benefit of Y approach).
Some organizations choose not to go down that path because of _____ (the key drawback of Y approach)”
“A third approach is to do Z. Customers take this approach usually to ____ (the key benefit of Z approach)
Some organizations choose not to go down that path because of _____ (the key drawback of Z approach)”

We need to be prepared to answer the spoken or unspoken question, “Why have customers been successful with our solution?”

We need to make sure our answers thoughtfully explain how our approach is in their best interest.

This objective consultative approach is consistently the most effective manner for establishing winning selection criteria.

Messages Advice

Our Banners are currently not strong. They might even be weak and ineffectual.
Determine why our Banners to-date have been ineffectual.
1. Do our messages need to be simplified?
2. Have we told crisp sales stories which support our Banners?
3. Have we provided appropriate supporting data?
4. Has our team contradicted itself?
5. Have we failed to develop sufficient trust with people so they will be open to our messages?
6. Have we used ineffectual advocates in the targeted prospect group to communicate our messages to others?

Develop a new messaging plan:
1. Write down clear, short, simple Banners.
2. Use Stories, facts, and images to support the Banners.
3. Pick articulate sponsors – informally practice and coach them on the messages.

“Thank you for your support. Some of the points about the solution are challenging to explain. How do you explain X,Y,Z to your colleagues? That is great. When we talk about X we usually add brief explanation how Account Y did this.”

Develop a ‘build trust plan’

If we believe that a lack of trust is hindering our ability to plant effective Banners, then we need to address the fundamental trust problem. If there are ‘trust’ issues, determine why they exist.

Develop a plan to win the trust of the people who do not trust us.
• Do we need to have some one-on-one meetings?
• Are there questions we have not addressed which are required for them to trust us?
• Is there a previous negative experience we need to address before we can move on?
• Have we done a good enough job demonstrating that we will put the prospect’s ‘best interest’ ahead of ours?

Conclusions

Had I conducted the Flight Check prior to submitting the proposal we would not have submitted a proposal until we had resolved issues in several areas:

• The customer had not been looking for a solution in this area. Although she was somewhat familiar with the category, she was not totally comfortable she understood all the decision criteria and associated business elements;
• While the problem and value was acknowledged, the decision to decide, to make this project a priority was not;
• The primary decision maker with whom we were working would also be responsible for implementation. She was just a few months away from maternity leave and was clearly pre-occupied with getting things in place for her absence;
• The beneficiaries of our services -- sales and the business leaders (as well as our marketing customer) -- had not been actively consulted and brought into the decision process.

It really comes down to fundamentals. Today's B2B sales are as complex as flying an aircraft, especially with multiple stakeholders on the buying team, and multiple participants on the selling team. A Flight Check is a great way to quickly review fundamentals and make sure that nothing is missed, and execution is flawless.

From now on we are religious about conducting Flight Checks at strategic intervals in our sales opportunities. In another situation this helped us recognize that the trajectory of the deal was moving us away from a success path, in time for us to take action to get back on track.

It's one thing to blow a layup, another to learn from it.

Risk of User-Generated Video Content

I'm really interested in John Jantsch's new book The Referral Engine. But I'm not sure I'll be reading it.

I have a full reading list and limited time. I primarily read material referred to me from a trusted source. It's a new book, so I'm waiting for reviews to emerge.

That's why today I jumped on the Twitter link to this "review" by Jim Kukral.

Warning: there is some negativity in this blog, delivered in the spirit of feedback and insight, born of disappointment and frustration.

A Review IS a Referral

Think about it. A "review" is a referral. I would hope that a book about referrals would teach someone how to provide a referral. This glaring omission in this particular review has me questioning whether it's missing from the book as well.

I'm making these criticism because we're dealing with professionals here. Not some geek … oops, after writing that I went back to Jim Kukral's website bio only to read (his words) "I'm a geek marketer." NO, really?

But he is a professional marketer, writer and speak. He's important enough that John forwarded a free, pre-release copy of his book for the review.

My primary point is not the poor quality of the review or video production. Although the poor content, production and delivery quality is relevant to my main point.

Organizational Risk

This video is a terrific example of what companies should fear when they think of user generated video content. And this was from a professional reviewing a high profile marketing and selling book.

Just because we can turn on a webcam, record a talking head and throw it up on YouTube doesn't mean we should. John Chambers of Cisco has bought the company that makes the Flip camera. He's advocating that sales people record their own customer video testimonials.

Is your organization ready for this? What about the adverse and unintended consequences?

Are you ready to address the issues and impact on quality and brand, perceptions about your company, best practices, standards, "costs" (more than but including monetary costs), legal, and wasted time, to name just a few?

Sales people and marketers do find video content especially compelling. Imagine "arming" your sales channel with PowerPoint, print brochures or PDFs when your competition is delivering relevant, compelling video. Reminds me of the old sales cartoon where the Indians are storming the fort and the general doesn't have time to meet with the salesman selling the brand new gatling gun!

What's a marketing function to do?

Think Like a Publisher

This is a fantastic opportunity to "think like a publisher."

Publishers have specialists that perform different duties to publish the finished product. Some acquire source content, others edit, manage, editorialize, write, layout, etc.

The potential of video communications is so compelling it won't be stopped. The question is will you get out ahead with an effective strategy, plan and support program?

Remember the old adage: "Give me a fish and I'll eat for today, teach me to fish and I'll eat for the rest of my life." I like to add my coda: "Yes, but who's going to stock the pond?"

Marketing should be stocking the pond. Creating content like publishers. Writing the obituary before the person dies.

When a sales person needs to send a video it must be ready. When your marketing automation system needs to send nurturing, educational, video content it must be relevant. When your social media strategy requires people on your business front line to be engaging using compelling, relevant content, with what will you arm them?

Avitage POV on Marketing and Sales Communication

My company, Avitage, has recently updated our point-of-view.

Over fifteen years the core vision has not changed: to enable front line business communicators to assemble and deliver multimedia (aka video) programs, that can be easily tailored to each audience -- even an audience of one.

But the delivery methods have certainly evolved, expanding the need for, and value of, our approach.

Enabling sales to meet revenue, growth and profitability targets is the responsibility of marketing and sales working in a collaborative effort. How you sell is a primary differentiator and opportunity to create value for customers.

These efforts should also be aligned around the common process of the customer's buying journey, and the objective of facilitating a faster buying process.

Seeing these objectives through a communications lens is an important distinction.

Communication is a function of:

1. Messages -- knowing what to say and how to say it - stories


2. Content -- relevant, compelling, for multiple purposes and in multiple formats


3. Delivery -- convenient and appropriate engagement of target audiences

More than ever, you ARE your content. People engage your content more than they engage your people.

Delivery opportunities and challenges dictate how content should be created, managed and deployed.

Delivery issues -- especially sales conversations -- are key drivers on sales productivity and effectiveness.

To be relevant, content must be tailored to the specific interests of each audience, packaged in their preferred content type, and delivered in a convenient and timely manner.

Front line business people -- sales, sales support, marketing, training, executives -- are responsible for directing communications with their constituents and are best at determining the appropriate message, content types and delivery timeframes.

Enabling front line communicators to access, assemble, personalize and deliver tailored, relevant content in the right format and at the right time for each constituent is a new and critical challenge for organizations.

To be compelling, more content must be available in rich media formats.

To support these and other requirements associated with new, digital media and web delivery options, requires a new approach to creating content -- a publishing approach rather than the traditional, "point production" process.

This must start with a new approach to messaging -- an "outside in," customer oriented approach.

In much the way accounting, manufacturing and software groups have standardized around common process supported by automation, the content creation process must be standardized around a new but common process -- to create like publishers.

This must focus on creating for multiple purposes, delivery media and methods from a single creation effort.

Automation is an important enabler, not the full solution.

These objectives are best achieved from a well defined program -- a content engine -- with clear strategies, plans, process, procedures, standards, templates and support. Your organization cannot achieve these objectives, and the required volume, quality, speed and affordability of content, from current, ad hoc and point production approaches.

On Sales Enablement

As I listen to the sales enablement conversation, it sounds like sales enablement is a euphemism for training, skill development and knowledge sharing.

The conversation is heavily influenced by system vendors. These systems improve access to content that delivers selling knowledge and customer collateral.

Reminds me of the old expression, "when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail."

Clearly improving skill and knowledge are part of what drives sales productivity. But I'm hearing two critical elements that have been missing from the conversation starting to emerge.

Leads Are Part of Sales Enablement

As a sales professional, I think one of the most important elements that enable sales to be more productive is a steady supply of qualified opportunities. Good leads vs. access to content? Give me leads every day.

It is now clear that an automated lead management program is a "must have" for B2B selling organizations. Our colleagues at Marketo are talking about marketing and sales collaborating to drive the revenue engine.

"The new revenue engine consists of systematic, repeatable processes than span marketing and sales to drive consistent, predictable revenue. It recognizes that demand generation is the key source of new customer acquisition, and it knows the primary job of a sales rep is to sell and close business, not create new opportunities."

By providing a program of formal lead generation and prospecting, supported by automated lead nurturing, marketing removes a large portion of the early stage prospecting and qualifying activities from direct field sales. These activities are time consuming and difficult to balance with working active opportunities. It takes a different personality and skill set to prospect and nurture effectively. For most organizations, this will also lower selling costs.

Support Sales Delivery

The second element of sales enablement that needs to be more fully developed I call the delivery challenge.

Forrester defines sales enablement in part as "a strategic, ongoing process that equips all client-facing employees with the ability to consistently and systematically have a valuable conversation."

IDCdefines it as, "The delivery of the right information to the right person at the right time and in the right place necessary to move a specific sales opportunity forward." "Sales enablement at it's core is maximizing the sales organization's ability to communicate value and differentiation in clear, consistent and compelling ways."

The sales job is fundamentally a communication challenge. Communication is a function of message, content and delivery. What's missing are more in-depth distinctions for communication delivery.

Conversations are a primary sales delivery method. This evokes the image of the rep sitting across the table, or belly to belly with customers.

Gerhard Gschwandtner of Selling Power told me he believes, on average, only about 17% of sales conversations take place live and in person. Other predominant delivery methods include:

• Telephone
• Email
• Print
• Video
• Traditional mail
• Web site pages
• Webinars, web meetings and virtual events
• Mobile devices
• Social media
• Third party delivery

A common sales complaint is the challenge of capturing customer attention. Caller ID and email volume create significant barriers to reaching prospects. For years I've helped technology companies address the challenge of the "four legged sales call" because sales people cannot be subject experts about all that customers want to discuss. Often, their ability to conduct an effective conversation cannot be improved simply with better knowledge, training or even content.

Bringing customer stories and testimonials to prospects is another delivery challenge. Delivering these messages in the voice of the customer is considerably more impactful than delivering as a sales story or a PDF document.

Each delivery method requires different skills, techniques, and support. The content requirements for each method are considerably different. How messages and content will be delivered significantly impacts what and how content is created.

Sales delivery options have fundamentally changed over the last decade. Entirely new methods have been created. This is why I believe companies need new content strategies and creation methods.

Seeing sales enablement through the communication and delivery lens opens new questions, opportunities and requirements.

How long is your sales process?

One of the early questions I ask prospective customers with a complex, B2B sale is, "how long is your sales process?"

The answer is almost always, "it depends, it can be three to eighteen months depending …"

In the past few years we've all gained a stronger appreciation for the idea of the customer's buying process. Sharon Drew Morgan's contribution with Buying Facilitation(R) helps us. Ardath Albee's buyer journey gives us a clear understanding. Automated lead nurturing has forced us to think through the buyer's journey and how to support it with relevant, compelling content.

Sales professionals know the sales process applies to qualified and interested opportunities. Sales participates in the active consideration phase of the customer's buying journey.

Two primary factors determine the sellers sales process:

• How long it takes to assess an active buyer's needs, engage all buyer stakeholders, influence buying criteria, configure a solution, deliver a successful proposal and complete the contract process;
• How sales people are managed, motivated and compensated

In most B2B selling organizations, this is one to two quarters. With sales people pressured for monthly business with quarterly accountability, any opportunity that will enter the active buying phase outside this period will not be on the sales person's active dashboard.

The customer buying process may well be six to twenty four months, from initial awareness of the problem through final vendor selection and contracts.

I see this as an alignment problem. The business challenge is to align the customer's extended buying process with the sales person's practical selling timeframe.

Traditionally, the sales organization was responsible for finding, qualifying and closing every opportunity. This made sense in a simpler, product oriented selling world. Once offerings became more complex, more solution oriented, and buying moved from the professional procurement function into the business functional group, the selling process had to change.

Most organizations I speak with are seeing selling costs getting out of control. IDC recently reported selling costs in the technology industry are rising 4.7% while revenue grow is growing 3.2%.

A fundamental challenge is finding ways to make the sales organization more productive -- to increase the yield from each sales professional. This is more than just improving skills, knowledge and time management. It has more to do with having well qualified opportunities to work.

We are in an era of specialization. The previous, monolithic selling effort has been disaggregated. This introduces a key role and opportunity for marketing. Lead generation, lead nurturing and telesales functions are more effective and affordable ways to handle the start of the buying selling process than an individual rep with a phone and email as primary tools.

This doesn’t completely remove the prospecting function from sales. But sales people are better at the in person activities, where marketing have better tools to engage the broader market with attraction and influencer marketing programs.

A marketer recently told me sales people need to take the long view. I disagree. Sales are the people who get the fish in the boat. Marketing are the people who take the broad and long view, who determine where the fish are, what will attract them, and how get them ready for sales to move them into the boat.

The classic marketing and sale disconnect is and will be replaced by a collaborative effort. This is the best way to deal with aligning dual realities: the extended buyer's process and the practical selling process.