The 3 M’s: Getting Buyers to Change

It seems ridiculous to think that change from a typewriter to a computer was anything but a “no brainer”. It wasn’t. In fact, there are still published authors, John Irving to name one, that write entire novels in long hand or on typewriters. Without the vision of how a change will provide benefits, very little may occur.

Getting a prospect to adopt your product or service and make a fundamental change in how they do business is hard, yet sometimes necessary. The best way I know to get a prospect from no to “Yes, I’ll consider making a change”, is mastering the 3 M’s of establishing value. If they can’t see any value or in other words a compelling reason to make a change, then they will stay firmly in the no column.

  1. Measurement. –  find out how the buyer measures value.  What we want to measure is something that gets a number in dollars. The best numbers are not based on opinion or conjecture. Asking questions helps determine what numbers the buyer values most.  With medical devices, value dollars are measured by recovery times and reimbursements;   with fleet management it’s fuel efficiency and driver safety, and in the food business it’s waste and storage costs.  These are all costs, costs that you can help them reduce with your product. How much can you help to reduce their costs?  This is establishing value with monetary results.   Dollar savings is a powerful value illustrator.
  2. Mechanism – What’s the mechanism you use to calculate the value?  In the food industry it’s cost to store food per square foot, in fleet management it’s miles per gallon.  Does your client have one?  If not, co-create it.  To have an effective mechanism the prospect needs to agree on the way the value is measured.
  3. Meaning – How do you analyze the data you created or co created with the buyer in step 2?  These numbers should be analyzed to improve the bottom line.  For example, a driver in a truck’s fleet reduces the average driving speed from 65 to 64 miles per hour; the driver will realize $100 savings from increased fuel efficiency per month, thereby, saving $1200 per year per vehicle in fuel. That alone has meaning to the buyer.  To provide greater meaning and more value as a sales partner, the seller should also provide context.  Give them context as to what you’ve seen in your industry or with other clients.  This is what context sounds like, “Mr. Buyer the other companies in your industry that has adopted this fuel efficiency strategy, and they realized on average a savings of $ 1200 per year per vehicle.”

The 3 M’s are measurement, the mechanism by which value is measured and meaning (dollars) to the measurement.  When value is established, the risk of changing is diminished.  If there is still hesitancy, start again at step one because you never found out the measurement that the buyer valued most.  We help clients frame the conversation with their buyers to include value in their conversations.   These tools, if used properly, will help buyers change from their old ways to your new ways.

Let Flannery Sales Systems help your sales staff sharpen their skills in establishing value.

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3 Ways to Optimize Your Investments in Salespeople & CRM

Most of the companies that we work with have invested in their sales organization to some degree. Whether it is money spent on sales training, a time and territory management offering, or an outing for team building, companies are investing in their people. The disconnect we see is that companies are willing to spend the money but don’t necessarily follow up to reinforce the lessons learned.

One area where most have invested is in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) programs. It’s consistently clear that CRMs are not being used as tools to optimize the dollars spent in your people. Here are 3 questions, with suggestions to consider, in assessing your sales training optimization as expressed through your CRM:

  1. Do tools reflect the steps in the sales process and promote the common vernacular used in training so everyone speaks the same language? Matthew J. Boyle, marketing director at a Massachusetts accounting and consulting firm describe this scenario, “When employees manage their own contact information and share it unsystematically, data-quality issues proliferate, and compiling and sorting correct, current information becomes an immense task. This can result in a firm that functions like several different small practices under one roof instead of a cohesive whole”. CRM’s customized with company-wide vernacular can help.
  2. How do salespeople internalize their customer’s needs and what steps are necessary to complete the sale? This can be laid out in a CRM as well. If companies had even one step defined and followed up on in a CRM for salespeople to track, wins would increase and training would be internalized. For example, if the salespeople attached their follow up letter outlining their sales meeting with the client and attached it to client in the CRM for all to see, Managers could coach to the correspondence, communication skills would increase, forecasting accuracy would improve, and trends could be analyzed.
  3. How do managers coach through the information in your CRM? Organizations can all have the same training experience yet, skill levels still vary dramatically. This is natural to an extent. There are always those people that just have “it”, but all boats can rise with the training tide. With a CRM based on a well defined sales process, Management will be able to quickly assess where individual development is needed. For example, a CRM would show that samples are sent to a prospect and date sent. This is useful information, but it can also show that there has been no meeting or discussion of that prospect’s needs. Product sent to client before goals shared is money down the drain. A manager could see this and use this as a coaching opportunity to reinforce the skills taught in training.

Like all good relationships, the match between training and the CRM is reciprocal. We help companies utilize their training dollars and dollars spent on CRMs to be mutually beneficial. Let us help your company design and implement a sales process that is optimized through your current CRM.

Flannery Sales Systems helps companies to define (or refine) and implement a repeatable sales process. Implementation success is increased when aligned with technology. We work with a broad cross section of industries. We are confident that we can enhance your results.

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What is SalesOpShop.com?

On the heels of the rapid development of technology and tools to supplement field sales organizations, the role of the Sales Operations professional has become more critical for success in driving revenue. In the past, the Sales Ops team was responsible for managing compensation plans, organizing the usage of CRMs and making sure that product knowledge was distributed from the Marketing teams. Like most job descriptions, the role is expanding as an integral component for success.

One of the challenges that the Sales Ops professional faces is sorting through the sheer number of offerings in the respective disciplines offered. Gerhard Gschwandter, Founder and CEO of Selling Power magazine recognized this challenge for both vendors and users alike. His recently released SalesOpShop.com is designed as a virtual marketplace that brings all parties together, helping to make connection in 15 Sales Operations related categories.

Check it out here: http://www.salesopshop.com/network?groupid=9e6c4f26-ad7f-4d13-9162-bb4b9d9ae7d3

Flannery Sales Systems is pleased to say that we are an early adopter of the SalesOpShop platform, and have already benefitted from our usage with a new customer. We are sure that more success will follow through the use of this valuable tool.

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Lessons Learned From a Life Well-Lived: Mary Jeanne Flannery O’Connell

My Aunt Jeanne, 92, just passed away. She was the last living relative of my parent’s generation. Jeanne had 13 children, 32 grandchildren and 36 great grandchildren. Add in spouses and you have well over 120 people. In her lifetime she had to manage the equivalent of a small village, and did it largely on her own following her husband’s passing in 1977. The photo above is from my wedding, when she joined me for the “first dance”.

In today’s economy, managers are asked to manage more people with dwindling resources. I thought about some of the memories that were delivered by my cousin Tommy during the eulogy around Aunt Jeanne’s “mothering” style, and believe it correlates well.

1. Feeling special. My aunt made every kid or grand kid feel like they were her favorite. She expressed confidence in their abilities to achieve and accomplish. If managers made each sales person feel like they could achieve, would they? If they make their sales people feel like they are going to fail, will they? Something to ponder.
2. Teaching (Coaching) moments. Jeanne took advantage of every teaching moment. She not only taught with words but also by example. It’s the do as I do that is most remembered. We could all use a reminder that teaching is not effective unless you live it.
3. Recognition. A nickel, quarter or a dollar was given for small tasks like mowing the lawn, returning books to the library or finding certain pesky insects and turning them in. The important thing to Jeanne, or the kids, was not in the money received but the recognition of a job well done.

As parents, we know that there is more to the equation when raising a family versus running a business, but the parallels are also there to think about. Thank you Aunt Jeanne for showing us how to do it, and God bless you !

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Negotiating In A Turbulent Economy

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Closing the big deal is exciting.   It looks so glamorous in the movies; standing in front of a board room full of executives with a dramatic speech, grandstanding and a win in the end.  In real life, the negotiations are usually quiet and not as glamorous.  In our business we help sales people capture revenue, and they’ve had to change the way they negotiate because of the fundamental shift in buyer behavior.  With fewer dollars in the budget, and a multitude of options, it can be a buyer’s market in some scenarios.  So here are some tips that a sales person should think about when negotiating in a tough environment.

 

  1. Did you identify the right goal to work on? In a choppy economy, it’s important to find out what really motivates the buyer besides beating you up over price.  In a business to business sale the buyer first wants to avoid risk, second, to avoid hassle, next, to select the right fit and then the focus is on price.  Have you discovered what risks the buyer would encounter when bringing your product or service on board?
  2. Identify Value and Non-Tangibles: as mentioned above sometimes the value you bring has nothing to do with price.  Your value could be as simple as taking a tedious task from a buyer like entering SKU’s.  You just made doing business easier.   A buyer can be more concerned with their own reputation, or getting praise from manager.  The questions you asked should be crafted to identify these early in the process.  Those non-tangibles are incredibly important in a situation when asking someone to make a big change.
  3. Maintain a healthy pipeline: The time spent building qualified opportunities should be greater in a down economy.   There is a walking point in every negotiation, and if your pipeline is full, walking away from a bad deal is not as challenging.

 

Let us help you craft the conversations to uncover value and the non-tangible issues facing a buyer.  When uncovered, the negotiations go smoother and may leave you some time to make a dramatic speech (if you’re into that.)

 

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On Cycles: In Life, Sales and At The Zoo

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On a recent field trip to the San Diego Zoo with my daughter Hannah (on my knee in the photo), the students, parent-chaperones and teachers went through an introductory one hour interactive session called the “Life Cycles Program”. We were all entertained by a great speaker who took us through the Four Steps in the Life Cycle ( birth, growth, maturity and decline), and the children were then allowed to pet a blue skink lizard that was shedding his skin as part of the phase 2 growth step that he was going through.

Shortly after this, we went on with our excursion through the magnificent park, and happened upon one of the displays where the giraffes live. Several of the zoo employees were corralling us to the side to let us know that an amazing event was unfolding: a mother giraffe was in the midst of giving birth to her calf! Alas, the first step of the Life Cycle was upon us. We were all excited, and asked to keep as quiet as possible as to not disturb this process (good luck on that with a group of 36 eight year olds!).

Cycles are also prevalent in business. There’s the product cycle, the sales cycle, buying cycle, etc. One of the most rewarding components in my career is watching a sales person, Manager, VP of Sales or Executive “get it” when I am bringing a new perspective to them and their team. With the “birth” of a new idea, many see an enhanced way of representing their organization to prospects and existing customers, and the results do follow.  And the primary vantage point that we strive to help our customers to adopt is one from the perspective of their customers. It is not, and never has been about the seller and/or his product, service or organization. It is about the customer, and if you do not understand what motivates them to want to use what you are selling, very little will ultimately happen.

We discuss the importance of matching your sales process with your customer’s buying cycle, as many leaders of Sales organizations confuse the term sales cycle with the important steps they go through during opportunity development. Be careful; it’s not about you as mentioned above! It is important to take the step back and identify if your customer or prospect is in the Solution Development, Evaluation or Commitment phase of their buying cycle. Only then can you determine how to match up your sales process to facilitate the buying process.

The skink sheds his skin as a natural part of its growth phase. How have you and your sales team adapted to the ever changing landscape between buyers and sellers? Mother Nature will move us along in the Life Cycle, whether we like it or not. Be sure to make sure that your buyer’s cycle is one that you are a part of, not one that you are on the outside looking in. Oh, and yes, the mother giraffe gave birth to a healthy calf, and both are doing well. Some of the questions by the 2nd graders on the bus ride back to school still have me perplexed, but that’s alright.

Flannery Sales Systems – We help you drive revenue through sales process.

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San Diego State Adds Sales to Business School Curriculum

SDSU just announced the addition of a series of Sales courses to the College of Business’s Marketing Department.  John (above) was pleased to participate with Dean Michael Cunningham as a speaker at the Kickoff event held on campus on May 8, 2012.  John, an active SDSU alumnus, was a recognized for his leadership in the field of sales and building enhanced sales competencies for his customers.

“Business and industry has a steady demand for qualified sales professionals and San Diego State University is one of the few major universities that has stepped up to educate our students to fill this critical corporate need,” said Dr. Michael R. Cunningham, dean of the College of Business Administration at San Diego State University. “The contemporary sales professional requires the ability and competencies needed to develop networking skills, relationship building and analytical proficiencies which are primary elements in the College’s sales educational initiative.”

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Top Deal Killing Mistakes Made by Intelligent Sales People

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The technical sale requires people who can grasp the intricate (or scientific, medical, etc) nuances of a product and are smart enough to articulate them in a simple, easy-to-understand manner.  These sales people are amazing to me.  Many times they are recruited to change seats from the buyer’s seat to the seller’s role.  This seller may be an electrical engineer in the computer hardware industry or the chemist in the life sciences industry (to name two) who are recruited to sell those types of products.  They are geniuses in their perspective fields, but have some deal killing tendencies that need adjustment.

 

The first step to making a shift is awareness.  Here are 4 ways for sales people to better align their time to work on the most qualified opportunities.

  1. Begin with the right person.  Entering the sales process at the user level almost guarantees a long selling cycle. Ideally, you start with the ultimate decision maker.  Remember in the beginning you are referred to whom you sound like.  You’re smart and you’re enthusiastic about science.  You will be referred to the person inside the organization that sounds like you.  You may have found someone that shares your passion, but they may not be the decision maker.
  2. Focus on usage instead of technical aspects of product. The focus of our selling process is to have buyers focus on how to use your product or service, not what the features of product are in an unknown environment. Technical information too early (we realize that you know the product inside and out) can kill the deal. Success stories are a better approach and they also reassure the buyer that others have successfully used your product.
  3. Talk Less.  By not making the buyer feel like he is in control of the conversation, you are likely to stimulate objections.  Being patient and asking good questions around business issues will provide greater insight in what the buyer needs and the value you can provide.  Recently, when training medical devices sales people we covered the list of questions they could be asking the buyers that would properly position their product’s capabilities.  They all responded that they already knew the answers to these questions so why ask them? The answer is: artificial patience.   You may know the answers, but the idea is to get the buyer involved.  Buyers are best convinced by reasons they discover. 
  4. Close when buyer is ready.  Understanding the buyer’s needs and the ideal time to close are keys to success.  As sellers become more experienced, they run the risk of moving the buying process along too quickly.  Buyers must be allowed to arrive at a buying decision and the seller needs to facilitate the process.  A sequence of events will help everyone see the steps to the process and understand the logical deal flow to closing.

 

Understanding deal killing/impatient behaviors will help the technical seller become the business partner the buyer is looking for and, if mastered, close ratios and revenue will increase.

 

Flannery Sales Systems helps companies to define (or refine) and implement a repeatable sales process.   Increasing revenue through the sales process is the ultimate goal. We work with a broad cross section of industries with a specialty in life science and medical device companies. We are confident that we can enhance your results.

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The Top 3 Milestones for Sales Success

Over the past few years, the majority of the work that we have done with customers is on defining (or refining) their sales process. This was necessitated by the dramatic changes exhibited in buying behavior during the pandemic. And indeed, the most important aspect of our customer’s sales processes is that it mirrors how their customers buy from them.  During conversations in both a formal and informal settings, we are asked “how many steps should there be in the sales process?”  If we knew that exact answer for each of our customers, we would be retired and they would have Instagram-like success!

So instead of trying to pinpoint the exact number of steps in a sales process, here are the must have, Top Three milestones that each team/seller must have in place to assure success. Please note that very few of our B to B customers have only 3 milestones (or stages), but when pushed to the wall, here are the 3 you can’t live (or sell) without:

1-     Access to the Key Players (Decision Maker): there is nothing new to the notion that you must get access to all of the key players, but the budget scrutiny that many organizations have placed on all expenditures since 2008 has made this step even more difficult. A clear articulation on how all important titles would benefit from the usage of your product/service is a mandatory requirement for completing this stage.

2-     Clear Understanding of Value: once you have the access as described in #1, can the individuals understand the value that your offering provides. Without this, you will be dancing in the dark when it comes time to go into the evaluation phase.

3-     An Approved Implementation Plan: approved as you co-develop the opportunity with your customer/prospect, not after the deal is signed. This sole step can help you to determine your “pole position” deep into opportunity development, and the seriousness of the participant’s gauges how “sticky” your solution will be thereafter.

One of our customers in the Medical Device industry was struggling to get into conversations with the key players in their existing customer base on a new offering they had obtained through an acquisition. The offering was an existing diagnostic test with a new enhanced feature.  The challenge was that the enhanced feature  provided a benefit that had never been completely commercialized. We sat down with a cross functional team from their organization and built a pro-forma model of what impact the solution had on the existing practices in the testing environment, and who would benefit from this.  They went searching for data to substantiate their assertions of what value this add-on widget could provide.  They found a reputable research company that had done a study that provided the information they were looking for.  We were able to help build a dollar value and a testing value into a pro-forma model (Benefit Summary). The Benefit Summary provided all involved with a complete understanding of the value of their new enhanced feature.

Next, we helped them to create a prototype of an Implementation Plan that correlated with how they could roll this out to their customers. Once completed, the sales process plan was delivered and executed with their main customers.  As a result, they have successfully sold an additional 12% in total revenue on this product alone in an $80 million dollar division.

What are you or your organization waiting for to drive more revenue? Let us help you to define (or refine) these steps and start picking up incremental revenue now!

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What is the #1 Pipeline Killer?

Keeping the pipeline filled with qualified opportunities is one of the toughest things a sales person is required to do.  And just as water in a pipe will follow the path of least resistance, so will a sales person when not kept on task.  It’s like homework in college or that dentist appointment that you’re putting off;   eventually these issues have to be addressed.

But why do today what you can put off until tomorrow?  Introducing the #1 pipeline killer – procrastination.  Just like pressure gets water in a pipe moving, a plan is the best way to prevent procrastination from sneaking in.

Here are 3 ways to bite off a “chewable” plan and keep constantly back filling the pipeline:

  1. Assess Current Customers – in many industries 60-70 % of new revenue is generated from the existing customer base.  These prospects are the most likely to close in a timely, predictable time frame.  Forecasting this revenue is the most accurate.  As a frequent customer of a Brooks Brothers, I was recently contacted by a sales person.  Through our conversation I gathered that I was a targeted customer because I spent $X in their store every year.  They know that I’m already a buyer and with an assigned salesperson they could easily increase those sales.
  2. Assess the Quality of Leads – no matter if leads are given to you or leads are organically generated, the most qualified leads are those with a personal connection.  In today’s world we are interconnected as in no other time in history.  That’s the marvel of social media.  I find in my business that the business-focused social media is very beneficial. Do I know who someone in the company that I’m targeting?  An introduction from a mutual acquaintance turns a cold lead into a really warm lead in an instant.  To spend time most effectively is the name of the game, and one of the ways I do this is with social media.
  3. Assess Progress with a Milestone – This is adding water pressure to the pipe.  The speed and velocity of the water through the pipe depends on pressure.  Sales people need triggers in place that quickly determine the speed and velocity of deal from contact to close.  There needs to be a trigger immediately after the first conversation.  Did the customer share any goals with me?  If so, that’s someone I need to spend more time pursuing.  The best milestone that can provide a great forecasting tool is a Deal Map. This is a document that lists by date and responsibility a map of the deal.  Buyer and seller agree to the terms and proposed timeline of the deal.  When both parties are working off the same document, forecasting probability and close date are easy to determine.

To get to the golden customer sometimes it means you have to sift through 100 not-so-golden ones.  It’s easier to tackle this daunting task with a plan.  As the ancient Chinese philosopher, Lao Tzu, so wisely said, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.”

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