Archive for category: General Information

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.

My family and I enjoyed a 10 day break at the end of July and beginning of August. Rest, recuperation and recreation are critical pieces of an organization (family, company, etc.) or an individual’s success. Despite what the 24/7 advertising world is bound to convince us of, burning the candle for too long and too hard has severe side effects. For more on this topic, read the Harvard Business Review article on “Challenges of the 24/7 Workplace” 

Now I am back in the office, following up after a week of delivering a Workshop for a customer. There seems to be many individuals who are on vacation now, as school seems to roll around earlier and earlier each year. This turns out to be a great opportunity to get to those items that have been ranked as a “B” or even a “C” on my To Do list since the beginning of the year.

Some of those items include:

1. Follow Ups: from all of the conversations in the first 7 months of the year, at least a dozen need to be revisited to see if they are moving from ”looking” to “interested”. You never know what will trigger an opportunity for your company.
2. Research: each month, my prospect list builds and I like to get deeper insight into what is happening with these companies. Seeking Alpha and Google Alerts provide overviews, but a deeper dive in the Harvard Business Review or Forbes always turns up a gem or two.
3. Send Information: do you keep an eye on your customers’ or prospects’ marketplace? I do, and often will send over a web link to an article of interest to them. Hopefully, this helps them to remember you when the time comes to discuss the use of your product or service.
4. Read: not sure about you, but my reading list grows faster than my ability to read.
5. Invite: my customers are always interested in getting to seminars or conferences related to their industry, and I like to invite them to join me, or send them on our company’s behalf.

If you find yourself with a bit more time now, and you’re not one of the people on vacation, take a chance to get caught up. Soon enough the bell will ring for school, and the start of September means the calendar year is headed for Q4.

Can you find the dog in this picture?

Lisa Nash has been a top performing salesperson in the Life Sciences industry for over 20 years, working successfully in a Major Accounts capacity with some of the largest pharma and biotech companies in the world. In the article she wrote for us below, Lisa describes her dedicated approach to the use of sales process, and how this helps her to meet her customer’s business objectives.  

The role of a sales professional is ever changing, especially as customers evolve in their procurement practices and organizations are fluid due to mergers and acquisitions.

It is important for sales professionals to also be fluid and able to adjust in order to keep up with these dynamic changes.  How can you stay focused and ensure success in an ever-changing environment?

By having a defined sales process.

Let’s consider a couple of scenarios.  As a sales professional, your territory changes or you take on a new role within the organization or with a new organization that offers an incredible opportunity, but you need to start over.  This requires you to assess the opportunities and establish relationships all over again.  How do you hit the ground running and be able to impact the bottom line and increase your sales?

By utilizing a sales process that you have learned, tweaked, implemented and tweaked again until it becomes yours.  No matter who the customer is, what their purchasing process is, or what their needs are you can be an immediate resource to them if you follow a process.

Our customers go through training, they belong to organizations, and they learn, tweak, implement and tweak again until they have their own buying process.  No matter the supplier, the products, or the technical requirements the professional buyer follows a process.

By using a defined sales process, we match up to the buyers’ process so that as a team we accomplish our mutual goals.

As a sales professional in a new account you must first identify who the key players are and determine their roles and goals.  Each person on the team plays an important role, so understanding the dynamics early on is very important.  They have different goals and measures of success, and you need to understand how to interact with them in a way that matters to them.

Second, the sales professional needs to determine what the key objectives are whether they are in reaction to a process breakdown that requires immediate action or if it is a long-term complex project.  By understanding what the customers “pain points” are and their desired outcome, you can formulate potential solutions keeping in mind who your key players are, the role they play, and what success means to them.

Notice, we still haven’t sold anything because we are in discovery.  We want to make sure we completely understand where our customers are coming from before we offer a quote for anything.

At this point, you introduce extended members of your team who can assist with establishing credibility for your organization and demonstrate how your team can help them.  Along with your extended team, you fine-tune the potential solutions and begin to develop a proposal that is aligned with your customers’ expectations.  Keep in mind, each member of the customer team has different needs.

Once you present the potential solutions, be sure to include a suggested timeline of follow up action items with items for both your team and the customer team.  Once you have completed this step, you move to the negotiation phase.  At this point, you clearly understand what the customer needs and your customer clearly understands the value your organization can offer as a trusted partner and advisor.

You keep working through this process until it is a win-win for both parties. And, if at any point, one of the key players goals have not been met, you continue to work through the process until they are happy with the outcome.

Sounds easy?  It could be and you can be successful.  The key is to plan, ask questions, understand your customer and follow a defined sales process.  Have your customer’s interest, as well as your organizations interest in mind before making any assumptions about the sales dollars at the end.