Archive for category: General Information

Part 1

The work we do with our customers includes intensive focus on sales management. These leaders are the ones who will implement the sales process we have built for their customer-facing teams. Because sales managers are so pivotal in this process, our understanding of their strengths and weaknesses, as well as how to help them to improve, is critical to their overall success.

Many sales managers still have large teams as a result of the economic downturn in 2009; some have up as many as a dozen direct reports. Even in situations where there are five or six salespeople per team, many managers are “deal coaches,” focused on assembling the right mix of products, services and pricing to present to customers. Coaching deals is important, as are regular pipeline reviews, but sales managers shouldn’t stop there.

Coaching skills is also extremely important to overall sales results, and it is often sorely neglected in the overscheduled world of sales managers. Take a look at the sales management skills below, and stack rank your skills from 1 to 6. A “1” is your strongest skill, and a “6” is the skill where you need the most improvement. Stack ranking means you can only use each number one time. Although you may want to give yourself high marks on every skill, you’ll need to rank them 1 through 6 in order to get an accurate picture of where and how to improve.

The skills are:

• Identifying and coaching sales rep skills before a deal’s negotiation and close
• Enabling salespeople to understand what a qualified opportunity looks like
• Coaching opportunities through the entire sales cycle
• Helping salespeople negotiate and close successfully
• Developing healthy revenue pipelines
• Forecasting accurately

Part 2

Now comes the fun part. We’re inviting you to send in your test results to receive customized tools tailored to improve your overall performance. To submit your results, simply send an email to john@drive-revenue.com with your stack ranking. If you’d like to submit for your entire sales management team, or to do so anonymously, simply enter “Manager A”, “Manager B”, etc. From the scores you send in, we will respond with tools to help you improve the lowest two scores you identified, the 5 and the 6.

In addition to providing you with customized feedback on your sales management skills, we will publish a follow-up article in which we provide an aggregate view of the results gathered from our customers (again, anonymously). This benchmarking data will allow you to compare yourself to others in similar roles and will help provide you with insight on key focus areas.

So, what are you waiting for? The road to improvement begins here. We look forward to hearing from you.

 

Matt Heinz has written a terrific book called “Full Funnel Marketing” (click here for a free download: http://results.heinzmarketing.com/FullFunnelMarketing.html)

The book describes the invaluable role that Marketing has in helping to fill the revenue Funnel with qualified opportunities, keeping buyers and sellers engaged and to close more business.

Matt and I had a chance to work together in 2014, and have stayed in close touch to share ideas at the intersection of Sales and Marketing effectiveness, a place where he is fully well versed.

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1. What was the impetus behind writing the book?

I fundamentally believe B2B marketers need to expand how they view their role in the organization, work much farther down the buying journey and sales process, and transform their role into a profit center for the business.  This includes changes in how they focus, how they measure their success, how they work with sales at a strategic AND operational level, and much more.

Full Funnel Marketing breaks down many of the best practices of how leading marketers are already embracing this challenge and responsibility.

2. What “trigger” events transpire that get your prospects to pick up the phone and call you?

The most valuable triggers are related to desired outcomes, likely “triggered” by an internal or external factor that makes change more urgent.  Sirius Decisions calls this the “challenge the status quo” stage of the buying journey, and it’s a critical opportunity to educate, reframe and build value with the buyer.

3. I’ve see you speak at conferences and you are very well prepared. Can you share any secrets for how you prepare?

Wow, thank you first of all.  What I do to prepare isn’t rocket science, but it works for me.  First is to focus intently on what the audience wants to hear.  Who will be there, what’s their mindset, why did they attend, and how can I give them some really valuable pieces of information that help them think differently, do their job better, etc.  Second key is to practice, be prepared, know the topic really well, and bring a lot of energy to the stage.

4. You live on a farm. How do you compare that to helping your customers to coordinate the efforts of Sales and marketing?

Chasing chickens is like chasing down leads?!  Harvesting the fall produce is about timing – get it while it’s ripe lest it go bad on the vine?!

I’m not sure there’s a perfect analogy there.  When it comes to managing our little hobby farm, my wife and I have similar but sometimes different objectives.  We ultimately want the same thing but have different visions of how to get there, what operationally we need to build or plant, what projects are bigger priorities than others.

For example, I really want to get pigs.  My wife doesn’t.  Both of us are committed to the ultimate goal of having a fun hobby farm that our kids enjoy and that teaches them responsibility, etc.  You can do that with pigs just as well as you can with produce I guess.  And so it is with sales & marketing, both ideally focused on the same objective but with different ideas of what to do every day to get there.

Are these the right leads?  Is that the right target market, or follow-up process, or trade show to attend?

    Although the word “profiling” may have a negative connotation in some capacities, profiling in sales is not only permissible, it is paramount to success.  According to Merriam Webster, profiling is defined as “the act or process of targeting a person (or organization) on the basis of known traits, tendencies, characteristics or behaviors”.

A successful sales organization knows all about targeting customers; understanding who they are, what goals they are working toward, what industry wide challenges commonly prevent them from achieving their objectives, and what motivates them to buy.  These “traits, tendencies, characteristics or behaviors” facilitate an understanding of how a company’s product or service aligns with the marketplace and provides a sustainable business model for success.  In a business setting, targeting may work for Marketing, but on the streets, reps need the specific criteria to go out there and win.

Identify the Criteria to Increase Success

Have you fine-tuned the profiling expertise of your sales department?  It’s not hard to define your target audience at a high level, but have you taken a granular look at who the ideal buyers are in your market?  Who are your reps calling on?  Are they picking out prospects randomly from an organizational line up, or do they know whom they are trying to identify?   Have you profiled the roles of those who can actually make or influence a buying decision in your industry or market?  Do you understand what they’re trying to achieve, what challenges they may be facing, and how to align specific nuances of your product or service directly with their particular roles?  The profiles of the roles of each person at the decision maker level may only be slightly diverse, but a rep’s clear understanding of the individuals, carefully profiled, can make all the difference in their success.

Ready, Fire, Aim Won’t Work; How We Help 

Our Sales Process Definition Workshops provide an opportunity to collaborate with our clients, utilizing research and our joint industry experience and expertise, to sharpen an organization’s profiling aptitude.  Together, we document the profiles of the compulsory decision makers and buying influences required to facilitate a sale with Marketing and Sales leadership.  We help pinpoint business objectives, needs, problems and challenges of the decision makers and those in a buying influence role.  Next, we help our clients carefully determine how specific components of their products and services align with their particular targeted audience profile.  In a messaging session, we help build a customized strategy for the rep to use when preparing for a conversation with the target audience.

Decrease the Cost of Sales with Clear Targets

Putting profiling strategies into practice speeds up the sale by providing valuable tools for reps to help them deliver a focused and consistent message, which qualifies the prospect sooner, shortens the sales cycle, minimizes defeat, and keeps the reps on their beat closing more business and doing what they do so well.  Profiling?  Not only permissible…a powerful strategy for success.

 

Melissa Clemens has experience in front line Sales, as well as in running a large, dispersed team. Her background includes product and service sales, and her Stanford English degree enhances her communication skills into a finely tuned art, transferring into sales success for her customers and herself. Listen in below on how Melissa has used sales process as the foundation of her success.

1. Describe how your customer facing teams (or you) use your organization’s sales process.

Sales process was instrumental to revenue achievement at my previous organization. I was Head of Sales for a national media company with a large, distributed sales team. We had over 400 reps in 26 different markets. With a team of that size, it’s imperative to establish a sales process for several reasons. First, a proven sales process demonstrates what success looks like, which is critical for your organization’s credibility. If reps don’t believe their quotas are achievable, they will fail. Second, a solid sales process is the foundation for building a training platform to teach reps the skills they need to be successful. Finally, a well-articulated sales process ensures compliance with critical sales ops protocols like establishing account ownership and sales forecasting.

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

In our organization, training was a one-time opportunity for new skill acquisition; coaching was an ongoing effort to hone and improve those skills. All good managers prioritized coaching, focusing on their middle performers and delivering personalized, timely and consistent feedback to their reps.

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

We encouraged regular sales training for new skill acquisition as well as one-on-one coaching with managers to further hone and refine those skills.

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

Take the time up front to develop a sales process that is customized for your markets and customers, proven to work and replicable. Invest in a training platform that allows reps to learn the skills necessary for success within their respective markets. Invest in talented sales managers that prioritize ongoing rep coaching. Finally, don’t forget to include key sales ops functions in your overall process as they are often critical to running a healthy organization that can consistently meet or beat revenue goals.