Managing The Buyer’s Risk

buyers_riskAs you move towards the final phase of the buying cycle with a customer or prospect, you are likely to encounter some manifestation of risk that the buyer is experiencing. This becomes heightened when a key player that you are working with is switching vendors, and there is some sort of cost associated with the change, whether it is financial, emotional or a combination of the two. Helping your buyer to manage that risk is important as you move towards the close.

According to an article in the publication of the Harvard Business Review titled “How To Live With Risks”, 60% of corporate strategy officers surveyed said that their company’s decision making process is too slow, in part because of an excessive focus on preventing risk. For salespeople, this means deals that drag out too long, and may completely derail if the risk assessment is not managed by the seller.

In my last trip to Europe, I had the opportunity to tour Hangar 7 at the Salzburg, Austria airport. Hangar 7 is a structure that was built by the Co-Founder of Red Bull, Dietrich Mateschitz as a place to store many of the high end toys that he keeps in the Red Bull organization. The building itself is a beautiful piece of work, with all glass panels encasing the egg shaped structure. As one of the dozens of craft (air, land, sea) in the hangar, there is the space capsule (as seen in the picture) that Felix Baumgartner used to break the world record of a free fall sky dive into the earth’s atmosphere; he jumped from 24 miles high!

The preparation and work to manage the very risky feat that Baumgartner accomplished was addressed before he launched himself off the short, one foot step attached to the side of the capsule. All factors were taken into consideration for his bold attempt, to include a myriad of scientific computations on the rate of his descent, the pressures placed on his body, and the atmospheric conditions in space as he entered the earth’s orbit and beyond.

And while it may not be as life threatening as Baumgartner’s leap, you must also help your buyer navigate those final steps in making their commitment to move forward with your solution. A certain level of risk is normal when making a change in your professional or personal lives, but some of the factors that could derail a decision need to be addressed sooner as opposed to later in the buying cycle.

In the customized programs built for our customers, we encourage the sellers to begin to help shape the picture of the transition to their solution while the buyer is still in the Evaluation phase. This allows two positive things to happen; first, it shows the buyer that you are thinking a step ahead, and how you will help them to make the switch, minimizing surprises along the way. If a buyer will participate with you in this exercise before making a final selection, this tells you that you are in a lead position. And second, this approach provides the buyer with a vision of how the solution will work in their existing environment. In most circumstances, our customers need to actually install a solution, and/or train individuals on how to use the product or service they are selling. Being able to shape this sooner in the sales cycle is a leading indicator of success.

The pre-thought that goes into this by the customer and you helps to paint the picture of success before you get the final approval. It will also enable your customer to address some of the risk they will encounter when making a switch.

 

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Align Sales and Marketing Teams on Lead Qualification Criteria

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How valuable are marketing qualified leads (MQLs) to your organization? MQLs are incoming leads generated by your marketing department, usually by encouraging prospects to come and engage with your business via the website, blog, newsletter, webinars, live events, etc.

The quality of these leads depends on many factors – here are a few:

 

  • How qualified is the audience? Exactly where did the marketing group find these prospects, and how closely do they match your ideal customer profile? The most successful lead generation campaigns are able to work from a well-defined customer profile and engage technology to specifically target that audience. The Sales management team needs to collaborate with Marketing to hone this profile for consistency.
  • How well have the leads been nurtured? Is your marketing department handing over leads the moment a prospect interacts with your site, or are they categorizing different types of interactions and customizing a response based on where those prospects are in their buying cycle? Prospects who are new to the site may still be trying to understand what their problem is and beginning to investigate solutions. Those that have had a higher level of engagement with your content or are repeat visitors are likely farther along in the buying cycle and ready for some targeted messaging or special offer to encourage them to look at you over your competition.
  • The human factor – at some point, someone in your organization will need to have a phone interaction with these leads and use qualifying questions to determine how good the prospect is, and whether or not they’re ready to hand them over to an account team. Whether this “pre-sales” function lies in marketing or in sales is up for debate, but this initial conversation is crucial in order to disqualify leads that are not good candidates for your product and will just end up wasting your time.

Many organizations want to know how well their marketing department is doing in generating MQLs, and whether or not they’re really “sales-ready”. How many of those leads is sales able to convert to paying customers, and what is the effort involved in doing that? Unfortunately, benchmarking your performance against other organizations is very difficult. Numbers will vary from industry to industry, and your definitions of what constitutes a MQL are likely to be very different from those of other organizations.

Improving the Matching Process

So how can you improve the consistency on the criteria that Marketing and Sales use to turn leads into revenue? The key is to understand how your market works, what are your levers for growth, and how are you doing compared to historical data. To do so, ask Managers from Sales and Marketing the following:

  • What is the ideal customer profile and where do we find that person?
  • Do you have a process in place to get that person to engage with your website and continue that engagement throughout the entire buying cycle?
  • Have your sales and marketing organizations come to a mutual decision about how these prospects will be nurtured along the way – when should key interactions like qualifying calls take place and who should be handling these activities? Have you established SLAs for sales follow up on SQLs?

Mastering the art of converting a MQL to a SQL (sales qualified lead) is not easy, but organizations that are able to execute on this will achieve higher sales numbers and more sustainable long-term growth.

 

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Celebrating 10 Years of Our Customers’ Success

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This year, Flannery Sales Systems (FSS) is celebrating a decade in business. We are proud and humbled to hit this milestone, and want to take an opportunity to recognize that this celebration comes from the success that our customers have realized through our combined efforts.

In 2004, my wife Septembre and I were in a conversation when I raised the idea of what I would like to do next in my career, as the company that I was contracting for in start-up mode was sputtering along with limited success. After describing how passionate I was about going back into field Sales, and how helping others to improve their success in Sales lead me to the Sales Training business, she simply said “then go do it.”  So I did.

Flash forward to 10.5 years later, and Septembre, (who comes along on an international trip every few years for a well-deserved break) and I are sitting in the airport in Shanghai, getting ready to fly to Tokyo to continue a series of 7 Workshops conducted over a 6 week period in four cities. How did this all happen? What a dream, an absolute decade of ups and downs and in-betweens that come with founding, building and running a business.

And like any other business, it starts with customers. But customers don’t just show up in a business to business marketplace with an average sales cycle of 6 to 9 months.  On March 1 of 2005 the business opened, and in 14 months, FSS ramped up to a full calendar of new customers, and a travel schedule that kept me on the road for 20-25 weeks per year. In August of year number 2 (2006), we landed what turned out to be a six year agreement with a large multi-national company in the scientific distribution business.

The key to getting great customers is having a strong team, and I have been blessed with both. Susan Wilcox has been the anchor on our team for years. Susan has an innate ability to coach, and to create content that reflects just what the customer needs to succeed. Many others have helped working in the business, to keep Marketing, Finance, Operations, Legal, IT and Admin afloat. Lauren Mills, Don Levy, Jo Burley, John Zimmerer, Tiffani Ross, Mindy Thomas, Kyle Kodra, Melissa Clemens and Malinee Kukkonen have all been valued contributors. Tom Martin from Strategy2Revenue has been the closest trusted advisor I have known in my 28 year career. I have also been fortunate enough to work with, learn from and get to know Gerhard Gschwandtner, CEO and Founder of Selling Power magazine. And finally, my brother Dick has been a huge help, especially in the formative years and advising me in many business and career-family- balance related topics.

To see salespeople improve, and to help their managers to Coach them effectively are the most rewarding parts of our work. We have watched teams improve results at the bottom of the 2009 downturn, and have helped B and C sellers to grow their skills to new heights. The greatest compliment we receive is to be re-hired when leaders move from one company to another; this has happened several times.  FSS has worked in 14 different countries representing attendees who speak 19 different languages. We have benefitted by learning about our customer’s customers, and how the cultural differences and language subtleties play an important role in their ability to sell effectively.

There is nothing left to say but Thank You. To those who believe in the team and me, I am humbled beyond words. For my valuable customers, your trust is something that we take very seriously and reciprocate with a commitment to help you to exceed. That conversation in 2004 with my beautiful wife catapulted me into a dream of a career, one that I don’t call work because I enjoy it so much. I am forever grateful.

 

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Coaching Sales Reps on Selling Skills

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*A guest article by FSS colleague and friend Tom Martin.

 

What is the best approach to coaching sales reps to improve their selling skills?  Why of course the answer is … it depends!

To help guide better managers on how to coach their teams I’ll spell out a few points to consider and include a simple framework that can be adapted for use in many situations.

Similar to a sales conversation, it is always a good idea to understand the current environment,  the problems caused by it, and your desired future state.  Following are some items to consider.

What style learners do you have?  The generation of the seller (GenX, Milennial, etc) is often used as a proxy for guidance. Some members of your team will learn best by doing role plays, others will need to receive “just in time” coaching in the field, immediately following a sales call.

As I have heard John Flannery say in a workshop, “People are best convinced by reasons they themselves discover.”   Similar to client conversations, coaching conversations are usually best when they include great questions to help a seller understand where they need to change their behaviors.

Microlearning is a popular topic in the Training & Development world.  Selling skills can’t typically be trained and coached in a single interaction. Instead, consider how you can provide snippets of coaching to help your sellers learn.  Include some topics in a weekly team call; send weekly tips that reinforce concepts learned in the last live training session; etc.

Coach to what is most important to your company.  Consider the overall business objectives or key initiatives for the company to guide your coaching.  Is “decreasing ramp time of new hires” a top 3 item?  If so focus your new hire coaching on the specific skills and behaviors needed to be productive members of your sales society.

These ideas, and the hundreds of others that can help, can get overwhelming and lead to Random Acts of Coaching.  To help drive some order out of the chaos the best approach is typically to follow a coaching system that can help organize your thoughts. Find a system that works for you and violently implement it!

Here are some key elements in a relatively simple system that I use:

  • Behaviors
  • Model
  • Approach
  • Cadence

Behaviors: Focus your coaching on the behaviors that support the Skills you want to put in place.   For example “asking great discovery questions” is a behavior that supports selling skills like prospecting, negotiating, and closing.

Model: When coaching behaviors consider the matrix of whether they are capable of doing it, and do they want to.  Sometimes called Commitment & Competence, or often Skill & Will in coaching parlance.

Approach:  Screaming at the scoreboard doesn’t yield great results.  Instead you should ask people how they think they should be doing things, potentially show them a better way, observe them trying to do it, and then give them feedback (Ask-Show-Observe-Feedback).

Cadence: With so many tasks to focus on, the best coaches have a regular rhythm around what and when they will be coaching (and doing the rest of their management duties).

For additional insights on coaching be sure to read other posts by Flannery Sales Systems like Are You a Great Sales Coach?

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Join FSS in Krakow for the European Language Industry Association (ELIA) Sales Process Workshop

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Sales Process ELIA Riga Apr 25 2014 - Copy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

John is pleased to be invited back to work with ELIA’s member companies to help improve their selling skills and ultimately their sales results.

How you begin a sales opportunity is just as important as closing the deal. Although the excitement of negotiating the final agreement gets much of the attention in sales, how you behave throughout the sales cycle will play a large part in the successful completion of winning new revenue for your company.

Please click on the link here to learn more about the session and how to register. For any specific questions you can email John at john@drive-revenue.com.

We hope to see you in Krakow September 30th and October 1st 2015.

 

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On The Road Again: Tokyo, Japan

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Click the arrow above to view John in Tokyo, Japan and hear what he has to say about our upcoming newsletter, including our 10 Year Anniversary, Marketing Qualified Leads and Coaching Skills.

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A Customer Success Story in Life Sciences

 

Kevin Leak is a two time customer of FSS, and a 25 year veteran in the Life Sciences/Pharmaceutical market and has lead teams in Sales, Product Management, Marketing and Customer Service capacities. His Leadership experience includes an Executive role in a $ 3 billion dollar science product distribution organization, as well as Sales and Executive Leadership in a $ 200 million dollar organization that provided translational models for research and testing in the Pharmaceutical and Biotech R&D markets.

Here is how Kevin’s teams benefitted from the services we provided:

“The Flannery Sales System’s Selling process has provided our sales team with a clear roadmap that has substantially improved how we turn new leads into fully qualified opportunities. The sales team has become much more effective in successfully closing highly qualified opportunities in a way that creates a win for the customer and a win for our company.  We now have the tools by which we create proposals that cover the total value that we can deliver, not just price quotes for our products and services.”

We thank Kevin and his teams for their repeat confidence in selecting us for helping them reach their objectives.

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On The Road Again: The Great Wall of China

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John had an amazing opportunity to travel to China for this month’s On The Road Again video. He discusses features in our upcoming newsletter which include our Ask A Sales Leader article, Prospecting and a customer success story.

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Ask A Sales Leader: Paul Doherty

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This month’s “Ask A Sales Leader” is Paul Doherty. Paul is the Vice President of Sales in Europe for SDL International. He has over twenty years of experience managing operations at multi-site service-based organizations in the commercial translation services industry.

Paul and John worked together at Berlitz GlobalNet 17 years ago, and shared trans-Atlantic sales leadership responsibilities for driving revenue. In addition to working together, the gents share a friendship through common interests in story-telling, travel and the adventures of parenthood, and recently caught up on all three over dinner in Munich in May (see picture).

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1. Describe how your customer facing teams use your organization’s sales process.

Our customer facing teams need to do their homework on the prospect’s company and industry sector before their initial meeting. We help our sales teams with industry sector-specific information and messaging around the business problems typically faced by companies like the one we are targeting. Since we are selling a complex solution of technology and services, we have a team approach to developing well qualified opportunities. Most deals we win have had at least four people involved in the sales process.

2. What is your Management’s approach to Coaching sales reps?

My approach is to get in front of the prospects and customers, together with the sales people. In this way, I can check the sales meeting preparation, the messaging, the meeting objectives and the post meeting follow-up and documenting the agreements and next steps. More importantly, I find out more from one face-to-face customer meeting than from any number of weekly sales reps calls. Customers are brutally honest, whereas sales reps often tell you what they think you want to hear or what they themselves honestly, but mistakenly, believe about the opportunity.

3. How do you reinforce sales skill development for sales reps?

Most sales skills are developed by the consistent use of a methodology or “best practices”. Simple things, done consistently, make the difference. Part of my job is to make sure the sales teams are doing these steps consistently and not falling back into their comfort zone of “winging” it.

4. What advice would you give to other sales leaders ?

Get out from behind your desk and get in front of your prospects and customers. Meeting prospects and customers is the biggest buzz in my job. If isn’t for you, what are you doing in sales?

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Transitioning from Sports to the Corporate Athlete

Kerri Pottharst Rips One

 

If you’ve ever changed careers or moved into a new position within your existing field, you know that the transition can be a challenging one. Research shows that skilled workers will change jobs nine times during the course of their careers, which has the potential to create a tremendous amount of both personal and professional disruption.

Athletes are no different, and my good friend Kerri Pottharst, a decorated Olympic medalist in Beach Volleyball (Gold, Sydney 2000, Bronze, Atlanta 1996) helps them transition from careers in sports to business. Kerri’s own transition from hours of training as an elite athlete to a successful businesswoman follows a proven blueprint that she teaches others to build and execute.

The following is from Kerri’s writings on “Corporate Athlete Training”, a program that she delivers within the context of other nutritional, fitness and wellness services. For more information, go to www.kerripottharst.com

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Today’s challenging business and social climate requires you to be perfectly fit – mentally, physically and emotionally.  Regular movement, consistent and adequate sleep, great nutritional habits and a winning mindset all add up to peak performance.

Corporate athletes are under more pressure and face more serious consequences if they fail. They have more demands on their time and there is no real “off-season”. The work-life balance is always precariously held by conflicting loyalties to family, business and self. And it is no longer about time management. It’s about ENERGY management. To succeed, excel and optimize your energy creation and usage, there are four areas we help you to plan and develop:

Mindset

You are what you think. And if you have a clear plan of what it is you want to accomplish, this is half of the journey. Sure, hard work and resilience may turn you into a good performer, but if you are looking for peak performance, you must think like a champion AND make a plan of how to get there. As Brian Tracy says, there are no “accidental” over-achievers.  Sorting through the normal periods of doubt and limiting beliefs will come and go, but the mental aspect of success must be planned and practiced.

Nutrition and Hydration

The health consequences of not eating well are well documented in all mediums of traditional and social media. And while it has become easier to “eat right”, there is still a tendency to grab the wrong foods when in a time crunch. One simple thing to do is plan for strategic snacking while at work, by bringing a few simple items with you from home that steer you away from the sugar-laden vending machine. Bananas, raw nuts and homemade granola are a few examples.

And where coffee, alcohol and energy drinks may seem to be the right fit for a moment, over the long run too much of any of these liquids will do more harm than good. Water is the key fluid you have got to take in, and if you weigh 150 pounds you should be drinking 100 ounces of water per day. The amount will flux in relation to your weight and exercise level.

Movement

YOUR CHAIR IS KILLING YOU! If you didn’t already know this, sitting in front of your computer for hours at a time does long term damage to many different parts of your body.

Many companies now offer “exercise at work” options to include on-site gyms, classes ranging from yoga to Pilates and more. Taking the time to step out for an hour and attend one of these sessions puts a whole new perspective on the day. And there is more and more empirical evidence around High Intensity Circuit Training, or HICT. This is a “less time, more effort” way to get an impactful workout, one that will ultimately restore your energy and increase your productivity.

Recovery

You all know a workaholic, or maybe you are one yourself. We all need a break from the rigors of work. Take a TIMEOUT! For some, a formal sabbatical from career is required when things get way out of balance. But before you get too burnt out, make sure you take regular breaks, daily breaks to “sharpen the saw”. One simple way to refresh that often gets overlooked is to get the proper amount of sleep. Seven to eight hours per night is suggested for most people.

Other ways to keep mentally refreshed include meditation, or just mindfulness of being in the present and concentrating on your breathing, There are piles of scientific evidence that show the benefits of slowing the mind down for even 10 minutes per day, and how this helps to reset your mind and body. Basic stretching routines can also help you to maintain flexibility, especially as middle age approaches.

The blueprint is above for how to make a successful transition, or stay on the path if you are already minding the important factors to creating and managing your energy, and being a well-rounded corporate athlete.

 

 

 

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