Sales Laundry

Posts Tagged ‘diagnosing problems’

How many hours each year do we keep new sales representatives cooped up in a room somewhere loading their minds with product information?

 Probably too many.

 The better question is how much time is spent teaching new sales representatives how to use that product knowledge?

 Would you like to field “smarter” sales representatives and help the middle 60% of your sales force close more opportunities?

 Then we need to look at how we build actionable product knowledge into our sales representatives in our efforts to get them ready for the field.

 Having sales minds loaded with product knowledge, in and of itself benefits no one, not even the “loaded” sales representatives.  It is in fact, a cost.  It is in the application of product knowledge to customer problems that value is realized for the owner, sales manager, sales representative and customer alike.

 In practical application, we have to load sales minds with product information, but we should spend at least an equal amount of time, if not twice that, training them how to wield the new weapon they have been given.

Moving From Product Knowledge to Actionable Product Knowledge

 Put your new sales representatives and the “middle 60%” of your existing sales representatives in role playing situations that force them to ask questions, a lot of questions, to uncover what issues a client might be facing.  Help them shape their questions and truly understand both the answers and the ramifications of those answers they get back.  Teach them questions that have answers tied to your products features.  Educate them with questions that will uncover problems the majority of your prospects have in common.  Teach them the questions that will help them locate problems your product solves that your competitor’s cannot.  Teach them the questions to ask when you are at a competitive disadvantage.

 Begin by teaching them a product feature, then teach the problems solved by that feature, and finally teach them the questions to ask to uncover those problems, if they exist, in your prospect’s business.

 Once the questions have been asked an equally important step is what to do with the valuable answers provided.  Show the sales representatives how to turn those answers and the problems those answers uncovered, into creative solutions built with your products and services with role play.  In the advanced form of this training, add time, budget, and political constraints they have to work around.

 Write case studies on your past performance, good and bad if you can stomach it, to help your sales representatives see real problems your company has identified and real solutions you have developed in the past.

 To keep your training relevant, have your new sales people travel with your Top 20% on new sales calls with the express objective of writing down questions they hear and the answers provided.  Review the trainee’s notes with the sales veteran’s perspective to make sure the new sales rep understood the conversation and was able to accurately translate what he heard.  Incorporate anything new and fresh into the ongoing training program.

 There is no value in being a talking brochure.  That ship has sailed.  No one cares what your product can do; they only care what your product can do for them.  Talking about features and benefits with a prospect just comes across as noise if the features/benefits are not relevant to his situation.  Smart questions bring clarity.  Clarity allows for accurate custom tailored solutions designed to solve specific client problems and answer the biggest unspoken question your buyer has, “What’s in it for me?”

Image courtesy of http://www.craigharper.com.au

part⋅ner [pahrt-ner] –noun   1. what every book on sales says a salesperson or business owner should become in order to be successful and make cow choking quantities of money that one could not hide under a house, let alone a mattress.

 Webster’s Dictionary would define the word partner a little differently, I am certain, but we are not talking about the dictionary for normal people, we are talking about the Zigler-Hill Unabridged Dictionary for Sales Professionals & Business Owners.

What is a Partner? 

A partner is a trusted resource that can be counted on to assist on an as needed basis in a mutually beneficial, but not necessarily equal, relationship.  We help solve our client’s problems with our expertise and they help solve some of our problems with cash.

None of us are experts on everything we have to make decisions on in our daily lives.  We need partners, advisors, parents, attorneys, accountants, carpet cleaners, plumbers, electricians, cable guys etc. to help us make good decisions and keep our lives running.

By saying you want to be a partner you are saying you want to occupy that small slice of someone else’s life that you happen to be an expert in.  There are only so many available slots so how do you get to be that guy?

How do you become a Partner?  Here are eight thoughts to get you started.

• Acquire knowledge that your client needs but does not have the time/desire to acquire.
• Bring a unique and valued perspective.  If you deal with many clients in the same industry there may be instances where you have seen common problems solved many different ways that you might be able to suggest.  Your unique perspective in this instance is something your client cannot duplicate easily.
• Understand your clients business to the point that your client can just explain the issues without having to explain the business.
• Look ahead for your client.  There are so many fires to put out each and every day it can be difficult to look down the road and watch for issues or advantages that could impact a business.  Be the eyes for your client, keeping them informed of new laws, products, technologies or trends might impact their business.  The better you understand their business the more valuable this type of resource can be.    
• Be consistent and reliable.  You can only be a partner or trusted resource when you are there when needed.  If you are unreliable or inconsistent your customer will find another resource to help solve problems in your area of expertise.
• Make your client’s job easier.  Provide information, insight or resources that help your client do his or her job better.
• Go to bat for your client when needed.  Sometimes your employer’s interest or even your own personal interests can conflict with what is best for your client.  Sometimes your clients need a man on the inside protecting their interests. 
• Respect your client’s time.  If you call or stop by, have something worth saying.  If you want to talk about the latest wiz-bang features on your product then limit it to the features that would make sense for your client and explain them in terms of your clients business.

Establishing partnerships is a mindset not a mission statement.  The easiest way for me to remember to stay in the right frame of mind is to remember a simple line. 

“Help your client build his business so he is in a better position to help you build yours.”

Image courtesy of Visionpoint.dk

From my experience, most companies don’t know their sales department is dead until they begin to smell the corpse and see their sales numbers fall off a cliff into Lake Competitor.

 It has been my job from time to time over the years to identify sales issues, diagnose sales health and return these sales organizations to top form.  As a result, I have learned where to look for the signs of decay.  Here is a rough version of the roadmap I use to find the problems.

Sales Metrics

 How are the Sales Managers measuring their existing sales team’s performance?  More often than not, I find that the sales organization as a whole is only using one sales metric consistently, final sales numbers. 

You can’t steer a dog by its tail and if you try you will eventually end up stepping in it.  The same is true of the Sales department.

 The final sales numbers should not be a measurement tool because it is too late at that point to do anything about it.  Final sales numbers are only a gauge, measuring your sales success for one moment in time.  No different than a customer survey or comment card after a sale measures overall customer service on a single sales transaction.

 A good sign would be to see multiple sales metrics in place and seeing Sales Managers actually use them to manage their business.  (CRM packages setup and used properly are a great source of information assuming the stored information is current, complete and accurate.)

The Sales Managers

 If the metrics are out of whack or missing I look for the Sales Manager to understand how he is managing his team and how he reviews his sales pipeline.

 Typically I find that a struggling sales department has a Sales Manager that is spending too much time looking at the bottom of the sales funnel or has never been trained how to  measure his team’s performance.

The Forecast

 The next stop is the individual forecasts of the sales team, present and past if available.  I want to understand how leads are collected and the process determining how a lead is converted to an opportunity and how it moves its way through the system toward a close.  I want to know what specific information a sales representative used to rank every opportunity on his or her forecast.

Usually this will tell me there is no consistent process for converting leads in place and the present standard is a combination of guess work and wishful thinking.

 I also want to understand what they are selling and equally important, what they are not selling and why.  This helps me understand what other departments outside of sales I need to visit.

Sales Training Process

 A look at sales training is next on my list.  How are the sales representatives being trained?  What methodology are they using?  How do they get trained on new offerings?  How have they been trained to manage opportunities through the pipeline?

The Services, Support & Systems Engineers

 Next I want to meet with the services manager. I want to understand how he decides what he will train his staff on, how they maintain certifications, how skill sets are allotted to the various offerings the company sells, and if there is communication with Sales to keep them in lock step with what Sales is actually selling. 

The Marketing Department

 The marketing department, if there is one, is next.  I want to compare the message Sales is sending with the message Marketing is sending.  I also want to understand how they coordinate their efforts in the end goal of bringing in more business.

C-Level Executives

 I want to understand the overall company direction.  What are the company objectives?  What are the company commitments to vendors and distribution relationships?  What is the company sales message? Etc.

Summary

 Decay in a sales organization can come all the way from the top, manifested in bad policies or poor communication that puts various departments in isolated silos.  From my experience it is the well connected CEO, or oddly enough the lowly Sales Manager that is in the best place to diagnose these problems internally.

 In the early days I only looked at the Sales department but as I worked through the challenges I began to expand my scope because many of the problems manifesting themselves in Sales I found were created by seeming innocuous decisions made in other parts of the company.

 If your sales department is inconsistent, struggling or darn near dead, look at the quality and quantity of your leads, analyze your forecast, focus on managing the top of the sales funnel and take this list and use it to find the root cause of your problem, don’t get caught up treating symptoms.