Sales Laundry

Posts Tagged ‘Improving Sales Results’

Q&A’s are excerpts of questions I have answered as part of Sales Laundry or other forums that I am apart of. If there is a relevant sales message for the masses I post it here to share, gather feedback and discuss.

Q: We have a strong sales guy, excellent with Small/Medium Enterprise accounts, but is obviously struggling to land large enterprise accounts and failing to sell them on our services.  He has not closed a single large enterprise opportunity.

I would appreciate any help in steering this guy in the right direction, any issues you feel they may have with these account types, and what plans/procedures/proposals may be put forward to resolve this issue. Thanks

A: The absolute best way to get to the bottom of the problem is to go with him on some SME account calls where he is excellent and some large account calls where he is struggling and see first hand where the challenges are getting the best of him.

The good news…

He is able to at least get an appointment with the Large Enterprise accounts, so he is able to convey value over the phone (I assume) to a viable company contact and get the meeting.

The fact that your sales professional is excellent with Small/Medium Enterprise accounts tells me he does have the ability to convey your products value to a prospective customer and secure a signed contract.

Areas to look for an answer…

The fact that he is struggling to land a Large Enterprise account does suggest some potential problem areas worth investigating.

1. SME accounts will almost always have fewer decision makers involved in making the ultimate decision to purchase your product while large accounts may have a handful of individuals scattered across the organization that need to be collectively convinced.

Look at who he is meeting with at the large accounts, is he uncovering all of the potential people involved in making the purchasing decision?  He might need help identifying who the key players are in large corporate environments and developing a successful strategy to get in front of all of them.

2. While he may be getting meetings at the large enterprises, I would evaluate his efforts at qualifying the person he is meeting with making sure they can make a purchasing decision vs. being an internal advocate that cannot influence vendor/product selection.

3. The problems of the SME customer may not be the same as the large enterprise customer.  If he is selling to the same pain points in a large enterprise as a SME account, he may be missing the mark by trying to solve problems the large enterprise does not have or are of too low a priority to garner immediate attention.

Ask him what pain points/problems he is trying to solve for the large enterprise and evaluate his answers with other sales professionals successfully landing large enterprise accounts.

4. Look at your historic sales cycles.  It is not uncommon for a sales cycle to be longer with a large enterprise account vs. a SME account because of the bureaucracy and volume of departments and decision makers that have to be won over to your offering.  Benchmark the sales cycle you went through to land your other Large Enterprise accounts and SME accounts and compare them to this sales professional’s benchmarks.

From my experience, the answer you are seeking is most likely somewhere within these four suggestions.  If, however, none of these seem to address the problem, pinpoint the specific areas (from first call to signed contract) where your sales process differs between your SME and Large Enterprise accounts.  Systematically work through each one of those identified areas with your sales professional as it is almost a certainty that one or more of them are the source of his struggles.

Last night I saw a small business owner hitch her business to a much larger cause and pull off an absolute rock star marketing strategy.

Forget how Kellogg’s tied breakfast cereal to our kid’s education, pardon the pun, but that is kid stuff by comparison.

I was watching America’s Got Talent (you can slap me later) with my two little girls when Pam Martin’s Top Dog act began.  The act was just as you would imagine; a routine with owner and dog doing tricks to music trying their best to be one of five acts out of twelve on the show to make it to the next round.

In real life Pam Martin runs a small pet obedience training business called Top Dog in what might as well be Dallas, Texas.  Pam branded her act on America’s Got Talent with the same name as her business, so every time Pam is on television her business gets a plug because at the bottom of the screen is “Pam Martin’s Top Dog.”

Now for the Rock Star Marketing Genius part.

By going on the show with her act, appropriately called “Pam Martin’s Top Dog” and showing off her training skills, Pam has successfully created and aired two commercials almost two minutes in length each showcasing her business to a national audience on prime time network television.

If Pam were paying for commercials on America’s Got Talent she would have paid $800,000+/- for that same air time, plus the cost of making the clips, not counting the 30 second human interest pieces that endear the performer (or business woman, in this case) to the audience. No matter the outcome,  Pam has already won $1,000,000 from America’s Got Talent and spent all of it advertising her business.

Consciously or not, Pam has tied her business to the number one television show on network television in its time slot, with 11.2 Million viewers that Tuesday night alone.  Pam has also benefited from NBC’s own marketing spend in all forms of media promoting America’s Got Talent for the price of a couple of costumes and stage props.

That beats the pants off of the marketing strategy and budget of every other pet obedience school in Dallas, TX.

Pam will also get to carry forward a little bit of celebrity to add to her business raising her exposure in her market and raising obedience training as a priority in the minds of her prospects.

Where else are you going to get to spend six weeks with a minor TV star for $100?  Call Pam.

I would bet Pam’s business is booming from the national exposure boosting her efforts to earn her next million on the back of that million+ advertising budget, regardless of what happens to the million the TV show is giving away.

Genius.

Pam tied her small business to a bigger business that could raise her exposure, add celebrity and other elements making her services a higher purchasing priority in her customers minds and managed to squeeze a million+ in free advertising out of the deal.

What can you do to think outside the box to become a top priority in your customers mind and start to work on your own million?

Image courtesy of http://topdogdallas.com

Big or small, we should all be actively working to prevent our products and services from sliding in importance for our consumers and being recategorized as a low priority as our customers retrench and re-shuffle priorities in this new economic climate.

What are you doing to raise your profile with your prospects and customers, compelling them to spend their hard earned dollars with you instead of sitting on the sidelines waiting for better days?

In this downturn, some huge companies are pushing new innovations to enhance the buying experience.  A few others are trying some far reaching ideas to connect with customers in a meaningful and personal way to gently nudge them into continuing to purchase their products.

Previously, I have written about what Kellogg’s is doing to make a bowl of breakfast cereal more important by tying breakfast cereal to our children’s education.  I have also written about Domino’s Pizzas use of technology to enhance the pizza delivery experience.

Today I noticed Microsoft paired itself with the infamous Jack Welch and Suzy Welch as co-hosts of a new online program (everybodysbusiness.msn.com) delving headlong into the problems faced by brand name (Hertz & Domino’s Pizza so far) businesses.  Jack and Suzy guide a diverse executive group in identifying some real challenges the company faces and then leverage the groups collective experience to find some legitimate solutions in a very candid way that makes you the viewer feel like you are sitting in the boardroom with them, watching and listening to an honest conversation you would otherwise never get to hear.

With the help of Jack and Suzy, Microsoft delivers valuable entertaining content that stands on its own, but still manages to drive the company message and squeeze in a stealth mini case study.  I for one am happy to report I did not feel like I had just swallowed a twenty minute Microsoft infomercial.

After watching this was I compelled to run out and setup a server farm driven by Microsoft products?  No, but I now understand in a subtle way that a lot of the technology Domino’s has in place across almost all of their stores, including their powerful online pizza delivery system is built on Microsoft technology, so Microsoft can probably handle the needs of my business.  I am not certain, though, how Microsoft fits into the Hertz solution by watching the show.

I just consumed a Microsoft case study reframed as (and rightly so) as a content rich business dialog with Jack Welch, and I enjoyed every minute of it.

Enough about Kellogg’s, Domino’s, and Microsoft, how can we make your product a more compelling purchase?  What can we tie your offering to that enhances you brand and ultimately sales?  How can we take a product that has dropped in priority with your buyers and get them snapping up your goods again?

I know several of you out there, so I am going to offer up a few ideas that will hopefully get you and everyone else reading this to expand your thinking.

Mortgage Industry. – Could you put together real/virtual seminars providing honest advice and resources for people struggling to pay their mortgage and help them save their homes?

If you could help me keep my home, or cross the great divide from renting to home ownership, helping me avoid the pitfalls along the way, you would earn my loyalty in a way the cheapest mortgage rate on Bankrate.com never could.

Copier/Office Machine Industry. – Every business of any size has some form of copier they bought/leased, right?  Could you setup business forums introducing clients that could benefit by doing business with each other?  Could you setup a lead exchange program identifying a need at one client business and passing that information along to another client business to potentially fill that need?

Bringing my business real leads and I just might be more likely to accept a slightly higher price for my supplies.  Real leads would certainly inspire my loyalty more than a cold-call walk-in four-legged (the new copier sales guy and his Sales Manager, typically) sales call ever could.

Can you think bigger?

Annual charity drives to collect reams of paper for a local school district or charity organization in your region?  Could you put together a toner cartridge recycling program for your city?  Have a big service fleet of vehicles?  How about delivering or augmenting Meals on Wheels efforts?

What about every other business?

How can you raise your importance to your community and the need for your product?  What programs or partnerships could you put in place to positively change the perception of your business and its support of your community?

Think out loud about your business and how you can raise customer loyalty and the priority of the problems your product solves in your customer’s eyes.

Think until you hear a “Wow” in your head, then tell me about what you came up with and let me know if I can help.

Through an odd set of circumstances I found myself touring the Lyndon B Johnson ranch outside of Johnson City, TX a while back trying to give my kids some perspective on history.

While looking at the hundreds of photos and exhibits across the three or four different sites I ran across a picture that gave me some perspective I was not expecting.

Under an otherwise typical picture in the exhibit of President Johnson shaking hands with an old gentleman with a bushy white beard was a crisp little quote that I almost missed.

“A five minute speech with fifteen minutes spent afterward is much more effective than a fifteen minute speech… that leaves only five minutes for handshaking.”

- Lyndon B. Johnson

As I thought about that statement my mind immediately jumped to the hours I have spent watching boring PowerPoint presentations wishing a hunk of ceiling would fall on my head so I would have a legitimate excuse to escape.

Then it hit me, (and not a piece of the ceiling, mind you) that spending hours writing and developing a presentation with little to no time spent developing a strategy to work the room post-presentation to communicate the important points face to face was just plain silly.

President Johnson figured out a long time ago that influencing the key individuals in the room that could be catalysts for the change he was advocating was a far more effective strategy than solely focusing on a big fat presentation.

Presentations are best used to lay out the facts as concisely as possible and not used as bully pulpits to agonizingly persuade an audience.  Face to face conversation, or “handshaking” as President Johnson put it, is where the deals really get done.

Long term success in sales is more determined by the network of prospects, customers, partners and friends you build than all of the killer 70 slide PowerPoint presentations you have spent all night cranking out.

Don’t get me wrong, a good speech or presentation can be essential to your eventual success but it does not have to last a lifetime in delivery.

The power in the room does not come from your presentation or your powers of persuasion but from the power of the prospects in the room and the strength of their desire to want to engage with you.

Presentations and speeches alike that are sharp, crisp, and to the point are, from my experience, much more effective than a gut-wrenching three-act opus that forces everyone to take a “bio-break” upon completion.

Use your speech to make them curious, use your handshake to make them customers, and that is a History lesson worth repeating.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Image courtesy of americandigest.org

How much time does your sales team spend on revenue producing activities?

 According to CSO Insights in their Optimization:2007 Survey Results and Analysis report the actual amount of time a sales person is actively engaged in selling averaged just under 36%.  My own experience would suggest that sales professionals’ time spent on revenue producing activities is closer to 30%.  The best run sales organizations that I have experience with engage in revenue producing activities, at best, no more than 50% of the time.

 If you don’t know where your sales team stacks up, it is time to measure.  If you find your sales team is engaged in revenue producing activities at or below 25% of the time, then there is a distinct possibility that you could almost double your revenue producing activities and lower your Cost of Sales considerably.

 If you find you have room for improvement, here are some of the most common things that eat a sales professional’s time.

 Building Proposals/Quotes – Look to offload this function to a non-sales role or to a low cost sales role where the proposal building experience could be used as a training tool.  If that does not make sense for your business, build common templates and boilerplate text to simplify the process as much as possible.  Think about your likelihood of winning a project vs. the amount of time you are going to spend on the RFP.

 Lead Generation – The same CSO Insights survey highlighted the fact that 18% of a sales professional’s time is spent generating leads.  This subtopic is worthy of several posts in and of itself.  If leads are being generated for sales within your organization, look at the quality and quantity of those leads.  A large quantity of poor leads is almost worse than no leads at all.

 Sales Meetings – Many sales meetings continue well beyond their expiration date. Is there a defined agenda for each meeting?  What items could be better communicated in a less time consuming way?  What items could be eliminated completely?  Eliminating four hours of meetings could give you 10% of your week back.

 Managing the Internal Sales Process – In the early days of my B2B sales career I spent as much as five hours a week walking a signed proposal through our internal processes, getting items ordered, following up on backordered items the order desk failed to tell me about, making sure all of the items arrived, setting up delivery, coordinating installation, making sure we invoiced for the correct items/amounts, making sure we had applied payments correctly to make sure my commission check would be correct and assisting with collections when it became necessary.

 Map your own internal processes and look for ways to streamline your workflow and get sales disengaged as much as possible from this process.

 CRM Software Data Entry/Retrieval – CRM software, when designed well CRM can be a fantastic tool.  Designed poorly, it can be an agony inducing, time sucking vortex that is worn like a boat anchor around the entire sales teams neck.  

 Work with your sales professionals and watch how valuable data is recorded and retrieved.  Look at the areas they use most frequently and the specific steps they go through to get to that data.  Does that process make sense?  If not, do your own ROI calculation on getting customizations done vs. the sales time lost.

 One Software-as-a-Service CRM package I have personal experience with could waste as much as five or ten seconds on every click as data moved back and forth across the web.  In my own pursuit of efficiency, I found that I was losing up to half an hour a day to those delays.

 Expense reports and other administrative paperwork – Look at all of the reports and paperwork you ask your sales professionals to create and ask yourself two questions.  Do we really need this report?  Does it make sense that our revenue producers are spending time on this as opposed to selling?  If it makes sense, great!  Carry on.  If not, look for ways to improve or eliminate the process.

 One more point before we wrap it up.  Finding, offloading or eliminating these non-revenue producing tasks is only half the battle.  Before you begin, establish a baseline of calls/meetings and other revenue producing events so you have a gauge on which to measure your progress. 

 Recovering five to ten hours a week for each sales professional to spend on revenue producing activities is only beneficial if they actually spend that time on revenue producing activities.  From my experience, you will need to break out your training hat and work with what could be up to 40% of your sales staff on the best ways to use the “extra” time.

 Every time I have done this exercise I have been amazed by some of the low value tasks that eat up enormous amounts of time and unnecessarily increasing my Cost of Sales.

 One more last, last point.  To maximize the benefits of this process, do not let this exercise turn into a micro management tool.  Remember your end objective is to increase “customer-facing revenue producing time” not “looking over my shoulder, wondering who is watching me time.”

 We have barely scratched the surface here but I hope this gets you thinking, measuring and doing.  If you have a “best practice” that helps you measure your revenue producing activity percentage or keeps you or your sales team engaged in revenue producing activities, I would love to hear about it.  As always, give me your thoughts and let’s get smarter together.

 Click here to learn more about CSOInsights and their annual studies.

Photo courtesy of http://fasteddie.wordpress.com

Before a decision to purchase is made, be it a newspaper or multi-million dollar project, a buyer has to evaluate the risks of making that purchase.

The basic types of risk are:

1. Physical Risk – The risk of injury by using the product or making the purchase.

2.Financial Risk – The chance you could lose money, or have to repair or replace an item.
3. Functional/Time Risk – The risk the item will not perform as expected or deliver the benefits promised or risk related to the passage of time and the possibility of rapid obsolescence.
4. Social Risk – The risk associated with what friends, co-workers, the boss, a spouse will think and do if a purchasing decision is made, including the risk of being fired from a job based on a purchasing decision. Hence the old tagline “Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM.”
5. Psychological Risk –The risk of experiencing “buyer’s remorse,” feeling bad, feeling guilty or other negative emotions for making a purchase decision.

All five of these risks are part of every purchasing decision. How you build your case to offset these risks for your buyer will determine how likely and how successful you are at closing the sale.

Bob Taska, a world class customer service driven car dealer, in his book “You Will Be Satisfied” took an interesting approach to eliminate some or all of all five risks when the quality of cars coming from Lincoln-Mercury were showing up on his lot with more than a few defects attributed to poor assembly from 1967 through the early 1980′s. He began a practice of what he called “blueprinting” the new cars, or rebuilding each car to the manufacturers design specifications. He advertised and sold his “blueprinted” cars at a 5% premium to cover his costs, developed a unique product, eliminated the risks associated with buying a Lincoln-Mercury at the time, developed a loyal following, and earned enough credibility to sell his cars from that point forward without the typical haggling associated with a car purchase.

Assess the Risks of Doing Business with You

Take a step back and look at your company, your brand, your products, your service, sales team, your overall reputation and what your customers are saying, accurate or not, identifying your strengths and weaknesses in each risk category from your perspective. Then repeat the exercise from a customer or likely prospects perspective.

Depending upon your sales cycle, you may want to look deeper than just the prospect you are meeting with. Will your prospect need additional risk mitigating information to defend his or her purchasing decision or materials they can use to help sell your solutions internally to people you may or may not have access to?

It would be a mistake to lump your company, your staff and your products together as you make your assessment. Weigh each one (Company, Product Category, Team, Product) separately to get a more honest assessment as strengths in one area may offset weaknesses in other areas.

Example 1: The strength of the IBM brand could offset some of the risk associated with a new, never heard of computer product. On the other hand, the IBM name would not carry much weight if that new product was a loaf of bread.

Example 2: A trusted sales professional could add credibility to a product with his long term clients by putting his/her stamp of approval on the product just as a less-than-reputable sales professional could add so much risk for a potential prospect that they would not even want to hear about the product.

Example 3: Toyota’s strength in building quality cars and being dominate in the electric/hybrid car category, thanks to the Prius, would most likely offset some risk associated with a brand new electric/hybrid car.

Example 4: The (social) risk I place on buying a $10 toy for my daughter is medium because I am concerned about buying something she will like, that will not be a waste of money (financial risk – medium.) The risk my 8 year old daughter places on buying a $10 toy is high, because it takes her a while to earn $10 (financial risk – high) and she has few opportunities to go to the store and shop (psychological risk – medium to high, functional/time risk – high,) and her friends might make fun of her when they hear about it (social risk – high) so it takes her a long time to make a buying decision. If there is a Pogo stick or Rollerblades involved, now there is physical risk to contend with as well.

How Risky is it to do Business with You?

Risk is part of life and certainly part of the purchasing decision. Take the time to make an honest assessment of the risks of doing business with your company from the prospects perspective and uncover the areas where you might be vulnerable.

What can you do to eliminate the risks associated with your products or services? How can you add enough “credibility” to your new company to outweigh the risks of doing business with you vs. a name brand leader in your field?

I would really like to hear what you come up with. Need some ideas? I am just a quick email away val {at} saleslaundry.com.

Image courtesy of thesituationalist.wordpress.com

Early into my sales career I found myself working in a regional electronics and appliance store trying to figure out how to sell the stuff I was surrounded by but had ignored my whole life growing up, appliances.

The #1 reason I wanted to know how to sell appliances was not for the noble purpose of being a knowledgeable source of information for customers; it was for a far more selfish reason, I wanted to beat Davis.

Even on my first day as a trusty new representative, I could see Davis was not a man to be trusted. He had shifty eyes, a smirk like he knew something you didn’t, and a good decade of experience on the rest of us. Picture Snidely Whiplash without the top hat.

Davis was the number one sales rep my first month at the store. He was also number one each and every month he had ever worked there. He was a selling machine and was being paid stupid money compared to the rest of the sales team.

How could a guy that looked about as trustworthy as a snake in a cage full of furry mice continually outsell every other guy on the floor? Why didn’t the customers see right through that stupid grin?

Trying to figure it out, I asked each and every other rep what they thought his secret was before my first two months was at an end.

“He just lies and tells them stuff to get the sale.”

“He has been here so long he has repeat customers that wait for him.”

“He steals sales on your day off.”

“The owner throws extra special customers his way.”

“Customers just don’t understand what a shyster he is.”

“He has good product knowledge.”

And finally…

“He is just good.”

It seemed easy to believe the repeat customer part, or that he had built up a client base that would come back to see him, but that did not make sense if he was lying to every customer he sold to.

The only thing I could see as a tangible difference was his product knowledge, so I set about learning about every item in the store. Anytime a manufacturer’s rep would come in the store I would quiz him about every feature and benefit to every box in the building that we carried.

I studied owner’s manuals (this was long before the Internet) and product sales literature. I watched the TV commercials to see how they were pitching the products. I even went to other appliance stores to watch reps, ask questions, and in general try to be an information sponge.

Finally, after six months of careful painstaking study I knew the story and feature set behind every product in the building and I thought for certain the very next month would spell the end of Davis’ streak of consecutive months at being number one.

I beamed with pride the first day of the month because I crushed Davis’ totals. I sold $2000 worth of merchandise, Davis sold $359 worth. Of course, it was a hollow victory, as that had been Davis’ day off and his one sale was a customer coming back with his card to buy a TV.

Day two, though, I was ready. I had a two pronged attack planned. I had massive product knowledge and I was fast, so I could out run Davis to the customers. I was certain with knowledge and speed combined, Davis would be doomed.

Davis crushed me.

Day 3. Davis crushed me.

Day 4. I was off. Davis crushed me.

Day 5. I was working. Davis crushed me.

With few moments of triumph, which I had already accomplished a time or two before I set my new strategy in play, that is how the entire month played out.

Finally, I decided Davis must have access to product knowledge through his experience I just did not know, so I decided to ask him how to sell Maytag washing machines, because Davis sold them better than anybody and they were expensive compared to the other brands for the most part.

What Davis said that day changed my perception of sales every subsequent day for the rest of my sales life.

He said “When a customer likes the Maytag’s, I sell them a Maytag. When a customer likes the Kitchenaid, I sell them a Kitchenaid.”

Don’t worry; it took me a bit of thinking to unlock the brilliance of that statement as well, so I followed up his statement with a very succinct question.

“Huh?” David laughed at me, looking at me like I was a little boy playing a game for the grownups.

“When the customer likes the Maytag, I tell them about how the small agitator in the Maytag washer is easy on their cloths, because friction with the agitator makes the cloths wear out more quickly. Maytag moves the water through the cloths, not the clothes through the water. Plus they are easy to repair yourself with front access and pieces that are user serviceable.” He said. “When a customer likes the Kitchenaids, I explain how the large agitator in the washer does a fantastic job of churning the cloths and scrubbing them clean as Kitchenaids move the cloths through the water and there are no belts that need replacing like there are on the Maytag’s. Get it?”

“Yes.” I said. I lied. It took even more thinking that night to figure out what he just said then it hit me like, like, like a truckload of Maytag washing machines.

I realized I had done all the research; from Consumer Reports to vendor reps and manuals, etc. and I had decided, based on my expert opinion, which products were the best and those were the ones I tried to sell everyone. If they did not see the brilliance of my logic, I would continue to whack them over the head with facts demonstrating why I was smarter than them and why they should pick the product I was recommending.

As a result I only sold customers I could shoehorn into what I thought was best, and I was taking way too long with the ones that were not listening, meaning Davis was selling more and getting to more customers.

Davis would steal a sale or two on your day off if you would let him, but he never tried to swim upstream with a customer unnecessarily to get them to buy what he thought was best. To his credit, the one the customer bought was the best one because that was the one that got him paid, not the guy at the appliance store across the street.

If you are selling multiple brands of essentially the same basic product, try to understand what each individual brand of that product type is trying to hang their hat on, so to speak.

There will be products selling on no other value than being the lowest price in the category, there will be products that try to offer a unique feature or service that they will try to differentiate themselves with and there will be the top of the line, feature rich models.

Which one should you sell? All of them. Ask your qualifying questions and listen to the answers. Let their needs and wants drive what you sell, not some preconceived notion of what you think is best.

Listen then educate, never dictate or pontificate.

I love cheesy sales one liners.

Image courtesy of newsday.com