Well, almost any tool. Like in many things, it isn't necessarily that you seek perfection in the tools that will help you do your job, sometimes the most important thing is just using something that will help beyond using nothing at all.
Account planning tools, for example.
One of our clients has an offering with a very long sales cycle, but is $500k to over $1M. It touches sales, marketing, operations, finance, purchasing, etc. So there are a lot of players.
One of the 3VL resources that I employ on the team for this client is working one of those $1M deals. As I began helping her review where she was with this opportunity, and a few others that she is working with that size of revenue potential and complexity, I realized that even though we overlay a lot of good process and reporting on top of SalesForce.com, it still didn't give the full picture of all the moving pieces in such a complex sales environment.
We clearly came to the point of needing a true account and opportunity planning tool for this particular type of sale.
Previously we were a Miller Heiman partner, reselling and sometimes delivering their sales training offerings, so I started there. I like the Blue/Gold/Green sheet approach, and they are actually integrated into SFDC, so that was the incumbent. However there is a lot of other stuff out there now, and I gave some of the others a good look. Many, like MH, are tools that are best used when you've taken a full course around them. They each, of course, have their own strengths and weaknesses.
To make a long story short, because my individual findings on each alternative isn't the point - I went back to what I know well, and that is the MH Blue Sheet approach. In summary it helps you identify all the buying influences, your position with them, the type of influence they have on the sale, as well as non-people oriented influences (like do you know the decision making process?). Then it helps you look at your strengths and identify red flags. Finally, you talk through how to amplify your strengths and what you need to learn/do to eliminate red flags.
Again, other tools take different approaches, but after walking our rep through that form in about 1 hour, we knew a great deal more about our position and how to improve it...and had a much better idea of what stood in our way of a sale and how to maximize our time driving to the outcome we wanted.
Sometimes, those type of tools also help you understand where to STOP investing time. I've done them before with a rep and what at the beginning sounded like a 'great' opportunity turned out to have so many red flags and insurmountable obstacles that we almost immediately decided to focus our efforts on other accounts with higher probability.
Doing such an exercise with say a rep's "top" 6 accounts can be an eye opening and difficult experience - because if you do it with open eyes, typically some of the top prospects become less 'hot' and the whole forecast can be affected...but if you are seeking truth and predictability in your forecast, this is one tool to get there.
Using a tool like that on an ongoing basis, especially for long sales cycle, complex, high doller value transactions can be a very useful thing.
And again - it isn't really the tool - it is that you use one and you know how to get maximum value out of it!
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Monday, September 24, 2007
The importance of detail
I've got a lot to say on this one...but only a few minutes right now...
Here's the first part of this - to me, one of the most important things when starting an interaction with a prospect is first impression. I don't mean how you dress and did you comb your hair, I mean establishing that you can communicate clearly and professionally and have a strong grasp of detail and the english language.
I'm experimenting with how to test for this in interviews (let me know if you have any tips!), but my experience is that many many sales people either can't spell or use proper english grammar, or they don't care. I see terribly composed emails, sloppy attention to detail like getting the prospect's name and their company's name correct, etc. etc.
I think the sign of a good salesperson is that they know that investing another minute or two reviewing and perfecting their communications is well worth the effort. I know I tend to put things in the bit bucket when the person on the other end can't spend enough time to show me they care about things like that.
Sales is hard enough and people's attention span on the other end of our communications is almost non-existent, so why lower your odds with poor grammar and spelling mistakes? Yet check it out - it is rampant in our profession.
Here's the first part of this - to me, one of the most important things when starting an interaction with a prospect is first impression. I don't mean how you dress and did you comb your hair, I mean establishing that you can communicate clearly and professionally and have a strong grasp of detail and the english language.
I'm experimenting with how to test for this in interviews (let me know if you have any tips!), but my experience is that many many sales people either can't spell or use proper english grammar, or they don't care. I see terribly composed emails, sloppy attention to detail like getting the prospect's name and their company's name correct, etc. etc.
I think the sign of a good salesperson is that they know that investing another minute or two reviewing and perfecting their communications is well worth the effort. I know I tend to put things in the bit bucket when the person on the other end can't spend enough time to show me they care about things like that.
Sales is hard enough and people's attention span on the other end of our communications is almost non-existent, so why lower your odds with poor grammar and spelling mistakes? Yet check it out - it is rampant in our profession.
Response to Robert
Since comments get buried under a post and it doesn't seem there is a way to get them 'in line' with the posts, I thought this one was worth putting up here:
You can see his original question in 'comments' section under the 'Just Write it Down' post.
That was a lot of commentary, but I think the ultimate question you asked was how do you make a self-centered salesperson become a team player, and if he doesn't should that be grounds for removing him?
My first glib response to that is always that I will put up with a lot for someone who is a real producer. As with celebrities, a certain amount of arrogance and self-centered behavior sometimes comes with a good producer! But that is disruptive to both the team and to the manager - so it can only go so far. Suffice to say I'm much less tolerant if they exhibit that trait AND they can't sell a damn thing. Chances are they are pissing off prospects just as much as they irritate internally. That type of person I will find out how to jettison.
For an individual contributor sales person, a response around how others should act to enable his state of mind is an invalid request, in my opinion.
His quota is his and his only, and his responsibility to achieve regardless of his perceived work environment. He can't put the mood or actions of others into the 'responsibility line' of that quota.
During a particularly diffucult relationship time for me a long while back I went to a counselor that said something to me that has always stuck with me in both relationships and business - he said "Greg - you can ONLY change your behavior and frame of mind and how you react and interact with others. You have NO control over making others change - and shouldn't ever expect that you can." That has made life easier - I no longer try to change others, that is pushing crap up hill, I can just choose how I deal with whatever the situation is.
If you believe that philosophy, George should counsel his salessperson that even if everyone is a complete moper, he alone controls not letting that get to him.
On the final piece - him wanting everyone to come to him - well, if that truly happened, he would spend time on stuff that doesn't contribute to him personally acheiving his quota and he would probably lose his job over it. That George can put to the employee quite bluntly.
You can see his original question in 'comments' section under the 'Just Write it Down' post.
That was a lot of commentary, but I think the ultimate question you asked was how do you make a self-centered salesperson become a team player, and if he doesn't should that be grounds for removing him?
My first glib response to that is always that I will put up with a lot for someone who is a real producer. As with celebrities, a certain amount of arrogance and self-centered behavior sometimes comes with a good producer! But that is disruptive to both the team and to the manager - so it can only go so far. Suffice to say I'm much less tolerant if they exhibit that trait AND they can't sell a damn thing. Chances are they are pissing off prospects just as much as they irritate internally. That type of person I will find out how to jettison.
For an individual contributor sales person, a response around how others should act to enable his state of mind is an invalid request, in my opinion.
His quota is his and his only, and his responsibility to achieve regardless of his perceived work environment. He can't put the mood or actions of others into the 'responsibility line' of that quota.
During a particularly diffucult relationship time for me a long while back I went to a counselor that said something to me that has always stuck with me in both relationships and business - he said "Greg - you can ONLY change your behavior and frame of mind and how you react and interact with others. You have NO control over making others change - and shouldn't ever expect that you can." That has made life easier - I no longer try to change others, that is pushing crap up hill, I can just choose how I deal with whatever the situation is.
If you believe that philosophy, George should counsel his salessperson that even if everyone is a complete moper, he alone controls not letting that get to him.
On the final piece - him wanting everyone to come to him - well, if that truly happened, he would spend time on stuff that doesn't contribute to him personally acheiving his quota and he would probably lose his job over it. That George can put to the employee quite bluntly.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Just write it down...please...
Or else...
Why do most sales people hate to write anything down - especially when it comes to keeping track of prospect and customer communications?
You see this all the time with contact manager and CRM systems. Sales Ops puts them in place and sales summarily ignores them.
With so many client projects happening at once, that doesn't work for me. Think of me as the VP of Sales over a set of Sales Manager that then have teams of their own. But I have multiple bosses myself - clients who often percolate up to me and I need to talk about a particular prospect or opportunity with them. If I can't see complete history in the CRM (SalesForce.com in our instance), then we look really really bad.
I guess I've always believed in tools like this mostly because my memory is so crappy. While I rarely 'own' an account these days, when I did a lot of that, I wasn't the type who knew exactly what every conversation was, what next steps were agreed, and what progress was being made against them. So I personally saw CRM tools as a way to be my memory, and I got way better at selling because of them. I threw my notebooks away - because I could never find anything in them anyways.
Also, we move people around on projects as requirements and the necessary skill sets change on a client project, as they always do. So if we don't have history recorded, that transition is difficult. The same thing may happen in your business when you go to move territories around, for example. Or people leave.
I make the point that no individual 'owns' the account, so they can't just do as they please. Part of how people are judged here is their ability to communicate a conversation within the CRM system, show clear next steps, and maintain accurate opportunity pipeline information.
My simple rule is that if it isn't documented (or documented poorly), it didn't happen or doesn't exist. If you tell me about a great meeting or a great opportunity, I better be able to go to SFDC and see everything you are talking about!
My opinion is that the adoption of the practice of documentation ALWAYS starts at the top. If the sales management is not constantly challenging the team to perform to expectations in this area, the initiative will die. I understand that I was outside the norm for a sales person and most would rather lick their shoe than have to write stuff down. But if the management isn't constantly vigilent about this issue, change will never happen...I've seen it many times.
Why do most sales people hate to write anything down - especially when it comes to keeping track of prospect and customer communications?
You see this all the time with contact manager and CRM systems. Sales Ops puts them in place and sales summarily ignores them.
With so many client projects happening at once, that doesn't work for me. Think of me as the VP of Sales over a set of Sales Manager that then have teams of their own. But I have multiple bosses myself - clients who often percolate up to me and I need to talk about a particular prospect or opportunity with them. If I can't see complete history in the CRM (SalesForce.com in our instance), then we look really really bad.
I guess I've always believed in tools like this mostly because my memory is so crappy. While I rarely 'own' an account these days, when I did a lot of that, I wasn't the type who knew exactly what every conversation was, what next steps were agreed, and what progress was being made against them. So I personally saw CRM tools as a way to be my memory, and I got way better at selling because of them. I threw my notebooks away - because I could never find anything in them anyways.
Also, we move people around on projects as requirements and the necessary skill sets change on a client project, as they always do. So if we don't have history recorded, that transition is difficult. The same thing may happen in your business when you go to move territories around, for example. Or people leave.
I make the point that no individual 'owns' the account, so they can't just do as they please. Part of how people are judged here is their ability to communicate a conversation within the CRM system, show clear next steps, and maintain accurate opportunity pipeline information.
My simple rule is that if it isn't documented (or documented poorly), it didn't happen or doesn't exist. If you tell me about a great meeting or a great opportunity, I better be able to go to SFDC and see everything you are talking about!
My opinion is that the adoption of the practice of documentation ALWAYS starts at the top. If the sales management is not constantly challenging the team to perform to expectations in this area, the initiative will die. I understand that I was outside the norm for a sales person and most would rather lick their shoe than have to write stuff down. But if the management isn't constantly vigilent about this issue, change will never happen...I've seen it many times.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Cutting to the chase
OK, this topic is a mix of some of the other things I said I would write about, but it is top of mind for me at the moment.
In general, sales individuals like to prolong a discussion with a prospect, in my experience. They find it unnerving when I walk into a conversation and quickly drive to why we shouldn't be talking to the prospect. They want to hold on to some glimmer of hope that there is an opportunity when clearly there isn't. And the prospect might cooperate in continuing having a discussion. Both sides get the sense that they are accomplishing something, even though the end result is realistically not a sale/purchase.
Sales is hard, and getting harder all the time. In our business, and I'm sure in yours, we can't waste time on conversations that won't go anywhere in the long term. So my opinion is to cut to the chase as quickly as we can. If we find a hurdle, and the inability to jump over it means the race is over, let's call the race over and move on instead of spending a bunch of effort trying to get over the hurdle when if we are honest the hurdle is too large. Our time is much better spent finding prospects where we do fit and where the hurdles don't exist or we have a better chance of jumping over them.
Prospects can find that approach just as unnerving as the sales person. In the role of participaiting on various sales calls as a sales manager, that's the stuff I try to find and address as early in the sales cycle as possible.
For example, one of our clients has a product that requires a 7MB download into the user's web browser. For some applications of this technology, that is clearly not problematic. For others, it can be a large concern. The typical salesperson will tend to ignore this and let the sale go on, and then all of a sudden much to far down the road it bites you in the ass and becomes a show stopper. So if it is a show stopper, what prevents us from addressing this very early?
To do this, I always try to present the benefit of whatever it is we are talking about. There is a darn good reason this particular client uses a plug-in architecture - and it is a huge benefit to certain types of applications. But there are cases where the benefit doesn't outweigh the downside. So I prefer to lay it on the table early on and get their objections out, understand how they will decide which side of the line they will fall with this issue and drive a decision on the issue. Yes, this is too big of an issue - great, let's not waste each other's time. Nope, not an issue - great, let's continue. Maybe - we need more info and it depends on some other stuff - great, what more do you need to decide and when you have that, how will you decide.
In a previous entry I mentioned a SI we were attempting to recruit. They work in the Government space, so a particular standard is important to their customers. Our client only partially supported the standard. Our salesperson wanted to do a demo, start trying to find a project we could work together, etc. To me that made no sense - why should we take their time and ours if the standards issue was going to ultimately be a show stopper - so I pointedly drove the conversation there - is this or is it not going to be a problem. In this case the result was good - they have clients that don't care that much, and what we have to offer overcame the downsides...so we continued.
Not driving to the 'how will this be funded?' question is another natural problem area here. One of the solutions we sell for a client is usually about a $500k sale. When I probed around how they will pay for it, our sales person said they stated that 'if it fits our needs, we'll find a way to pay for it'. Even for a large company, I find that hard to believe. A half million dollar sale needs to be in a budget because it is an agreed priority - most companies don't just find that kind of discretionary IT spend. Sure enough, we got well down the road and invested a lot in the sales cycle and near the end got slammed with the 'well, we can only afford $150k'. Had we pushed hard on that when the fuzzy funding answer intitially came up, we probably would have decided to walk. Even if 'we'll find it' is a valid answer for that company, we need to know hard details around what exactly has to happen for them to find $500k outside normal budget process. If the prospect can't answer that, we should really think hard about proceeding, and should certainly express our concerns...we have a business to run as well.
So, I know it is hard, but next time you sense something that you think might be a show stopper, try to train yourself to attack it right away. Forgetting about it, burying it, not addressing it will most likely lead to a lost sale anyhow - so you are better off getting over the loss now, not later!
In general, sales individuals like to prolong a discussion with a prospect, in my experience. They find it unnerving when I walk into a conversation and quickly drive to why we shouldn't be talking to the prospect. They want to hold on to some glimmer of hope that there is an opportunity when clearly there isn't. And the prospect might cooperate in continuing having a discussion. Both sides get the sense that they are accomplishing something, even though the end result is realistically not a sale/purchase.
Sales is hard, and getting harder all the time. In our business, and I'm sure in yours, we can't waste time on conversations that won't go anywhere in the long term. So my opinion is to cut to the chase as quickly as we can. If we find a hurdle, and the inability to jump over it means the race is over, let's call the race over and move on instead of spending a bunch of effort trying to get over the hurdle when if we are honest the hurdle is too large. Our time is much better spent finding prospects where we do fit and where the hurdles don't exist or we have a better chance of jumping over them.
Prospects can find that approach just as unnerving as the sales person. In the role of participaiting on various sales calls as a sales manager, that's the stuff I try to find and address as early in the sales cycle as possible.
For example, one of our clients has a product that requires a 7MB download into the user's web browser. For some applications of this technology, that is clearly not problematic. For others, it can be a large concern. The typical salesperson will tend to ignore this and let the sale go on, and then all of a sudden much to far down the road it bites you in the ass and becomes a show stopper. So if it is a show stopper, what prevents us from addressing this very early?
To do this, I always try to present the benefit of whatever it is we are talking about. There is a darn good reason this particular client uses a plug-in architecture - and it is a huge benefit to certain types of applications. But there are cases where the benefit doesn't outweigh the downside. So I prefer to lay it on the table early on and get their objections out, understand how they will decide which side of the line they will fall with this issue and drive a decision on the issue. Yes, this is too big of an issue - great, let's not waste each other's time. Nope, not an issue - great, let's continue. Maybe - we need more info and it depends on some other stuff - great, what more do you need to decide and when you have that, how will you decide.
In a previous entry I mentioned a SI we were attempting to recruit. They work in the Government space, so a particular standard is important to their customers. Our client only partially supported the standard. Our salesperson wanted to do a demo, start trying to find a project we could work together, etc. To me that made no sense - why should we take their time and ours if the standards issue was going to ultimately be a show stopper - so I pointedly drove the conversation there - is this or is it not going to be a problem. In this case the result was good - they have clients that don't care that much, and what we have to offer overcame the downsides...so we continued.
Not driving to the 'how will this be funded?' question is another natural problem area here. One of the solutions we sell for a client is usually about a $500k sale. When I probed around how they will pay for it, our sales person said they stated that 'if it fits our needs, we'll find a way to pay for it'. Even for a large company, I find that hard to believe. A half million dollar sale needs to be in a budget because it is an agreed priority - most companies don't just find that kind of discretionary IT spend. Sure enough, we got well down the road and invested a lot in the sales cycle and near the end got slammed with the 'well, we can only afford $150k'. Had we pushed hard on that when the fuzzy funding answer intitially came up, we probably would have decided to walk. Even if 'we'll find it' is a valid answer for that company, we need to know hard details around what exactly has to happen for them to find $500k outside normal budget process. If the prospect can't answer that, we should really think hard about proceeding, and should certainly express our concerns...we have a business to run as well.
So, I know it is hard, but next time you sense something that you think might be a show stopper, try to train yourself to attack it right away. Forgetting about it, burying it, not addressing it will most likely lead to a lost sale anyhow - so you are better off getting over the loss now, not later!
Monday, August 13, 2007
What's Next?
Here are some things that I'm hoping to cover in the near future...any ideas, give me a shout.
ARTICLE 2
What makes a good value proposition that someone might actually care about? (hint: it may sound obvious, but it has everything to do with them and not much to do with us!)
ARTICLE 3
Why do sales people sometimes waste their time? (hint: it feels good to set a demo or send out pricing...even if there is no hope of a sale.)
ARTICLE 4
Activity is key, but beware of a focus on it as the only indicator of progress. (hint: ultimately, revenue production or raw customer acquisition is king - so don't take your eye off that ball and think that raw top-of-the-pipe activity will cure all.)
ARTICLE 5
Why is sales process so ubiquitously ignored or implemented poorly? (hint: much of sales is seen as an art, not a science...truth is it is a bit of both, but process has a good place)
ARTICLE 6
Why do sale people typically not document what the heck they are doing? (hint: one reason - sales management hasn't shown the benefit and builds process that is too ownerous! There is a happy medium that gives value to both sides)
ARTICLE 2
What makes a good value proposition that someone might actually care about? (hint: it may sound obvious, but it has everything to do with them and not much to do with us!)
ARTICLE 3
Why do sales people sometimes waste their time? (hint: it feels good to set a demo or send out pricing...even if there is no hope of a sale.)
ARTICLE 4
Activity is key, but beware of a focus on it as the only indicator of progress. (hint: ultimately, revenue production or raw customer acquisition is king - so don't take your eye off that ball and think that raw top-of-the-pipe activity will cure all.)
ARTICLE 5
Why is sales process so ubiquitously ignored or implemented poorly? (hint: much of sales is seen as an art, not a science...truth is it is a bit of both, but process has a good place)
ARTICLE 6
Why do sale people typically not document what the heck they are doing? (hint: one reason - sales management hasn't shown the benefit and builds process that is too ownerous! There is a happy medium that gives value to both sides)
Why should they listen?
Seems to me there is nothing better to introduce this blog by introducing what I think is still the number one issue around why sales people fail to make their number and struggle to find traction for the product they are flogging. What is this faux pas that all sales people have been trained on many times but still fail to figure out? I call it the ‘speeds and feeds’ phenomenon. Or ‘bits and bytes’. Those come out of the tech industry, which is my heritage, but since we have non-tech clients as well, I know it exists with sales people that populate those organizations.
Simply put this means selling features, not benefits. The first call sounds like regurgitating a data sheet. Then typically sales person says something like ‘so that is what we do, what do you think?’ …to which the answer is usually some dead air on the phone line and the sales person wondering where they went wrong.
I recently was acting as a fly on the wall in one of our discovery calls just to see how our guys were doing on a new project. We train HEAVILY on the avoidance of this phenomenon...but to my surprise the sales manager opened with exactly that! “We build a widget that does x, y, z, blah blah blah blah”…to a VP of Service Delivery, none-the-less. The call went so sideways from there, no surprise, that I used the trick of introducing myself as “just entering the room and catching only the last 60 seconds, but let me reset the table and see if there is a fit.” I started out by saying “I don’t really know if there is a fit here or not, but so we don’t waste your time or ours, I always like to cut to the chase.” Then I gave the high level value prop…something along the general lines (details deleted to protect our client relationship) of “We help companies like yours solve {a very specific problem} with a {very specific benefit}. If we could demonstrate that to you, do you think there may be some value in us {doing business together/building a relationship/whatever the outcome of ‘yes’ would be}”?
All of a sudden the conversation turned around. The VP said “Yes, actually that is definitely a problem for us, and if you can help me out with that, we might have something here”. Now in my 60 second pitch I didn’t mention our (client’s) technology ONCE. Not ONCE. I told them what the technology could DO for them and why they might CARE. And I wasn’t invested in the answer – well I was only invested 60 seconds in the answer. If what we could do/solve for them at a high level was a fit, there would be plenty of time to talk bits and bytes. But why would I waste a bunch of time talking about some stuff they ultimately could care less about? If I was the salesperson I could be using that time to find others that might actually care instead of beating a horse that was dead from the beginning.
I mean, I get it – it is much easier to memorize some product features than it is to translate that into something someone might care about. But until SOMEONE translates the features of a product into benefits that a CFO or other decision maker is willing to pay for – you aren’t making a sale. And if your hope is that by spouting a bunch of features that the prospect will connect the lines themselves…well, think again and then go find another career after your sales career sputters to a halt.
Simply put this means selling features, not benefits. The first call sounds like regurgitating a data sheet. Then typically sales person says something like ‘so that is what we do, what do you think?’ …to which the answer is usually some dead air on the phone line and the sales person wondering where they went wrong.
I recently was acting as a fly on the wall in one of our discovery calls just to see how our guys were doing on a new project. We train HEAVILY on the avoidance of this phenomenon...but to my surprise the sales manager opened with exactly that! “We build a widget that does x, y, z, blah blah blah blah”…to a VP of Service Delivery, none-the-less. The call went so sideways from there, no surprise, that I used the trick of introducing myself as “just entering the room and catching only the last 60 seconds, but let me reset the table and see if there is a fit.” I started out by saying “I don’t really know if there is a fit here or not, but so we don’t waste your time or ours, I always like to cut to the chase.” Then I gave the high level value prop…something along the general lines (details deleted to protect our client relationship) of “We help companies like yours solve {a very specific problem} with a {very specific benefit}. If we could demonstrate that to you, do you think there may be some value in us {doing business together/building a relationship/whatever the outcome of ‘yes’ would be}”?
All of a sudden the conversation turned around. The VP said “Yes, actually that is definitely a problem for us, and if you can help me out with that, we might have something here”. Now in my 60 second pitch I didn’t mention our (client’s) technology ONCE. Not ONCE. I told them what the technology could DO for them and why they might CARE. And I wasn’t invested in the answer – well I was only invested 60 seconds in the answer. If what we could do/solve for them at a high level was a fit, there would be plenty of time to talk bits and bytes. But why would I waste a bunch of time talking about some stuff they ultimately could care less about? If I was the salesperson I could be using that time to find others that might actually care instead of beating a horse that was dead from the beginning.
I mean, I get it – it is much easier to memorize some product features than it is to translate that into something someone might care about. But until SOMEONE translates the features of a product into benefits that a CFO or other decision maker is willing to pay for – you aren’t making a sale. And if your hope is that by spouting a bunch of features that the prospect will connect the lines themselves…well, think again and then go find another career after your sales career sputters to a halt.
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