Selling Styles: Art or Science (A Love Story)

I love my job. My primary responsibility is to create LEADS. In my career, I’ve created a few hundred thousand quality leads to be distributed across an array of sales teams. With numbers of this scale, the main issue that kills me is not necessarily the lead source, cost per lead, OR lead quality. It’s that “Susie” closes her leads at “18%” and “Jimmy” closes his at “8%”.  Mentally, I see “n” number of Jimmy’s missed opportunities floating away in the smoke of burning money — WTF!

I live in a world of facts, specific metrics, blended averages and trends. Given that the laws of large numbers suggest reasonable equity in quality and distribution across all the Sales Reps, it is extraordinarily painful to realize the amount of money burned with the conversion rate delta from Jimmy to Susie. It’s painful enough when you have only 2 reps, but what if you had 1 Susie’s and 3 Jimmy’s or 5 Susie’s and 30 Jimmy’s?

Which begs the question – should Sales Reps sell via ART or SCIENCE?

In some organizations, 80% of the revenue is created by only 20% of the sales team. If you want to achieve the next level of scalability, I feel you need to master the SCIENCE in order to raise all the boats. And when I mean YOU, I mean Reps AND Managers AND Executives.

• Executives must budget for and recognize that giving their Managers the right tools will allow them to monitor, correct, leverage and be held accountable for the results.
• Managers must study the space they are selling in and put together a best practices selling process to use in the tools that all the Reps will follow.
• The Reps must use the tools and follow the process - even if flawed – so Managers can monitor the measuring points, view those metrics objectively and make changes to the process as needed to drive improvements across the entire sales team.

Think of it this way. What if you could leverage some of “Susie’s Art” and mass produce it as a Science.  True, you can’t convert 100% of it, but…

• What “Jimmy Sales Rep” out there wouldn’t want to drop the way he does it in exchange for the success Susie has?
• What Manager wouldn’t want to close the gap between Susie’s and Jimmy’s closing percentage to make his numbers better?

What Executive wouldn’t fork over the short money (Often the daily price of a cup of coffee for that same Rep) for the tools that would easily pay itself off by closing that gap alone?

By the way, did you notice the word – Process.  Right away this screams science.  It’s a documented, repeatable way to generally get the same results within the laws of large numbers.

Don’t have one? Are you afraid of the term? Don’t like being “boxed in by the man”?  Do you think you’re too small an organization to have one?

You want to scale? You want to succeed? Then “sales process”, “opportunity workflow”, “lead management”, or any similar term has to be part of your vocabulary.  Don’t let the term make you cringe. Any good sales manager wants his team to have the right sales best practices. It often starts with process.

If you have a sales process, do you monitor the results? Do you leverage the peaks? Do you remedy the valleys? It’s not just about where your wins come from, it’s about where do you lose deals. Where is one rep winning where the other reps are losing? How can you correct that? Is your best Sales Rep still running strong? Are your weaker Sales Reps getting stronger? Are you reaping the benefits?

Documented or not, I guarantee you have a sales process.  At Landslide CRM (insert shameless plug to our Interactive Demo that explains more), we come across, uncover and shape real sales processes and opportunity workflow all the time.  Don’t be afraid of process, leverage it.  Find empowerment and freedom through the structure. A successful CRM that provides that structure and process doesn’t have to be complicated to be powerful. And make sure you are collecting as much data as you can by leveraging the use of custom fields to your specific selling needs so you will have a factual, metrics based, picture of what’s going on in your organization. You can always go back and report on what you’ve collected later … but you can never make decisions on information you’ve never collected.

In the end:

• Jimmy will be closing a lot more like Susie.
• Managers will be able to help more Jimmy’s along and make their numbers.
• Executives will not only see a return on the monies invested, but also the time to put that “Science” in place.
• Your Lead Generation Team won’t be watching their budget go up in smoke.

Which do you prefer … Selling as an Art or a Science?

Special thanks to Jeffrey Cody for his contribution to the Solution Selling Blog.

Column Fodder

I know that I want a burrito, and I know who has the best burrito in my town, but for some reason, I still can’t resist using the clever iPhone app called Urbanspoon.  My favorite feature of this app is its highly additive ‘slot machine’.  You shake your iPhone and a little slot machine randomly suggests restaurants to try.  My favorite locale is the (gold standard) that defined the qualities that I truly enjoy in a burrito – everyone else that I consider, well, they have a lot to live up to.  Unfortunately, the ‘other’ restaurants offering burritos have become columns B, C, and so on in my evaluation.

Welcome to the world of column fodder – whether we are talking Mexican food or $1M software applications, if you aren’t first, then you have lot to live up to.  In the world of Solution Selling®, we call this an Active Opportunity (they are already working with another vendor, but feel that they need to do their due diligence) – you may or may not realize it, but this is very likely the majority of the deals in your pipeline.  You my friend are one of the other Mexican restaurants.

When you are responding to a pre-established list of requirements which have been defined by your competition, you are left with very low win odds.  Essentially, the company that worked with your prospect to define their requirements has developed a bond of joint discovery.  They showed your prospect their perfect burrito.  Although, if you are willing to roll up your sleeves, and use the principles of Solution Selling®, you can increase your odds of winning the business.

When qualifying opportunities and you are late to the party, you need to go beyond your ‘normal’ qualification criteria.  These traditional elements are typically constrained to things like budget (is the project funded), authority (is there a decision maker in place), need/fit (does you offering match their list of requirements), and time frame (have they identified one, and is it within a reasonable period).  There is nothing wrong with these components, which are commonly referred to as BANT.  But, if this is the only criteria that you use, then you are selling to prospects that have already made up their mind of who to buy from.

At this point, if you discover that the opportunity is in fact active, you may want to understand some additional criteria before throwing some time and resources to try to win the deal by reengineering the prospect’s vision of the perfect burrito.  In Solution Selling®, we call this an Opportunity Assessment; at the very least you will want to know the following:

Successful Sales formula™ - P_xP_xV_xV_xC

In other words-

• Pain – “is the customer likely to act?”
• Power – “are we aligned with the right people to win?”
• Vision - “does the customer prefer our offering?”
• Value – “does our offering provide mutual value?”
• Control – “can we control the buying process?”

You can further drill into each of these components in more detail as well, to fully vet out things such as have they identified their pain, are we talking with the people in power, etc.

Once you have vetted out this sort of detail, then you can determine your strategy for either pursuing the opportunity with the goal of convincing the prospect of your better/different take on burritos, or walking away. 

In today’s sales cultures (where most companies sales funnels are simply not large enough), many managers frown on sales reps qualifying out of opportunities, but if you don’t have a shot, learn to celebrate walking away. 

In conclusion, just because you did not define the requirements for your customer, you still have a shot to make them believe in the vision that you redefine with them.  Although, if this is not possible, make it ok to walk away; someone else is out there.  Find them.



Top 7 CRM Predictions for SMB’s in 2011

This past year has brought seismic changes across the CRM landscape, from the explosion of mobile devices to the ever-increasing presence of social media incorporated into the business landscape. So what’s ahead for CRM’s for small businesses in 2011?

Here are my top seven predictions of what you can expect:

1. Social Capabilities Become Integrated

Social media has arrived to all aspects of our lives, and yes, it will play an active role in helping us sell both business and consumer products in 2011. Social media tools will become integrated into our core CRM solutions. To be successful, social media cannot just be an add-on, it must be fully integrated into the CRM platform and business processes. Social media should flow through every process in the sales cycle.

This integration will make it easier to manage social media campaigns from within your CRM. It will also offer valuable points of contact to interact and strengthen relationships with customers and prospects in a more social environment. Organizations will discover a faster sales cycle and lower cost of acquisition using integrated social media.

2. Mobile will Drive Productivity Gains

2011 will be the year when CRM finally hits the mobile device. It’s impossible to go anywhere these days without seeing people of all ages and occupations with a mobile phone in hand. In 2011, mobile devices will become the critical tool for companies of all sizes trying to gain a competitive edge in today’s marketplace.

As a result, many organizations will make iPads, iPhones, Blackberrys and other smartphones a standard issue. These devices are proven and powerful enablers that help sales professionals book new business and stay in touch with customers with instant access to e-mail and phone.

In 2011 we will find companies leveraging these smartphone devices beyond just being a necessary communication device. They will be using them as input devices and access tools for their CRM systems to reach much higher levels of productivity.

3. Sales Playbooks will Increase Close Rates

Taking a lead and converting it into a deal is a leap of faith with yesterday’s CRM systems. In 2011, you will see leading CRM vendors begin to incorporate sales “playbooks” or “checklists” that highlight key steps in the sales process to help sales people sell more effectively.

Here’s what happens with traditional CRM systems: a lead comes in, the salesperson enters the data related to a company name, contact name, contact info, product they are interested in, price of product, identify the lead program the lead came from, prospect company revenue, industry, org chart and on and on. Your sales team may spend their entire day entering unlimited amounts of data about the lead. Is that considered time well spent closing a deal? I don’t think so!

In 2011, CRM systems will become intelligent enough to help the sales reps figure out what to do next, and more importantly how to do it. Incorporating these playbooks will increase close rates on deals.

4. Lifecycle ROI Management for Small Businesses is Possible

In 2011, CRM systems will allow companies to take more holistic view of the ROI for an account. They will track the marketing cost, close rates, deal sizes, etc, allowing for automated reporting of the ROI for any campaign or account. Today, there are disconnected systems that do pieces of this. In 2011, it will become fully integrated into the CRM for small businesses.

Additionally, sales and marketing executives will use the same CRM system to manage customer renewals, up-sell and cross-sell opportunities. This data will be automatically included in ROI calculations.

The realities of the new economy have highlighted the importance of being able to effectively manage the entire lifecycle ROI calculation for a customer.

5. SMB’s Totally Embrace The Cloud

In 2011, SMB’s will realize what larger businesses have been seeing for many years, cloud computing is the future. SMB’s will realize the benefits of faster deployment, lower cost of ownership and allow them to focus on their core business. Cloud computing also gives them access to powerful applications such as CRM’s that are otherwise not possible to deploy in a smaller business without the need for a large IT organization.

6. CRM Vendors Add Personalized Services

The majority of CRM systems offer basically the same core functionality and the same feature sets. Some, obviously, do it better than others.

I believe in order to really differentiate from the pack, CRM vendors will need to switch from a product-oriented focus to a more service-based approach. We should call the new category SaS … “software AND services” and not SaaS, “software AS A Service.”

Instead of simply selling a product, CRM vendors will begin to offer a list of value added services including adoption assistance, lead generation, best practices training, data importing/exporting, etc. The impact of these services will establish a long-term partnership and ensure that the systems features are being properly optimized and adopted.

7. Sales Forecasting Becomes More of a Science than Black Art

Although it’s difficult to do, sales forecasting is critically important for organizations. 2011 will bring us tools that allow for much more accurate sales forecasting for small businesses.

Sales management is under an ever-increasing pressure to provide more accurate sales forecasts of top-line revenue to better schedule production resources, order raw materials and to plan for the cash needs of the business. Companies of all sizes use sales forecasting to decide, with the greatest accuracy possible, what and how much to build and buy. Sales forecasts drive hiring plans, investment requirements and compensation plans to name a few.

There is considerable data that suggests that most quarterly and annual sales forecasts are off by a huge margin. According to a CSO Insight research report, sales forecasts are found to be accurate only about 50% of the time… that’s no better than tossing a coin!

Why?

It’s simple: Forecasts are subject to personal opinion!

In 2011 you will see tools that drive much more precise sales forecasts by completing steps that follow a proven sales process. Once a sales process is defined and realistic percentages for the likelihood of closing a deal are assigned to each step of the process, then the forecasting system takes care of the rest. Now it’s easier to generate more accurate forecasts that reflect realistic sales opportunities based on activity completion in the sales process - not opinions or, as I call them, “hopecasts.”

So there you have it. The seven things that I predict today’s small businesses will see—and should be looking for—in 2011 as they consider and adopt a CRM system.

 A big thank you to Rick Faulk for his contribution to the Solution Selling Blog.

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The Fear of Prospecting: "Phone-a-phobia", Part 2 of 2

The Fear of Prospecting Part II of II: Phone-a-phobia

If you didn’t read Part I of II, Click here…

How do salespeople overcome the fear of prospecting? What is a prospect? For most salespeople, a prospect is someone that is currently looking for the kinds of products or services that their organization provides. With this definition in mind, many salespeople think of prospecting as hunting for people that are looking for them – a relatively small number of hard-to-find opportunities.

What would a salesperson’s life be like if we turned the typical definition of a prospect on its head?   What if we defined a prospect as a person who is not actively looking for your products or services at the time that you call on them? The universe of potential prospects grows tremendously under this expanded definition.

Today, most potential prospects do some research and scan the Internet from time to time, looking for ideas for solving their business problems, even if they are not actively evaluating vendors for any specific solutions. Therefore, it would be foolish to think that prospects are not “educated” buyers. However, because most people do not have formal requirements for solving many of their business problems defined yet, they are not quite “expert” buyers. In these cases, the best sales prospectors are those who make first contact with buyers, and help them progress from a casual interest to the point where they admit they have a business problem that could be addressed with that salesperson’s product or service. It is only at this point that prospecting ends, and real selling can begin.

There are three stages of effective prospecting:

1. The prospect admits interest and curiosity.
2. The prospect admits there is a pain – a critical business issue or potential missed opportunity.
3. The prospect and salesperson agree that the problem is big enough to warrant action, that it should be investigated further, and that the salesperson’s products and/or services could help with this type of problem.

Many salespeople don’t get to stage two or three because of their inability to effectively generate interest and curiosity. Phone-a-phobia (or call reluctance) is based in:

• Not knowing what to say when they call
• Not knowing how to compile the necessary information to make effective prospecting calls

How do you overcome this lack of knowledge and the fear of prospecting?  A simple, effective five-step process is all it takes:
 

1. Planning - Most salespeople are deficient in time management. One salesperson confided to us that his time management process is based on “STP”: the first month of the quarter is reserved for Strategic activities, the second month for Tactical activities, and the third month is full of Panic.

Prospecting starts with booking “sacred” prospecting time. In general, a salesperson that is at quota should have at least four hours of sacred prospecting time booked on their calendar each week. If you are not at quota, then you should book at least twice as much time. If you don’t reserve this time in your calendar, other immediate or urgent tasks will consume your unscheduled prospecting time.

2. Prepare - There are two parts to prospecting preparation. One is research, and the other is pre-call planning. During this time, the salesperson determines whom he or she is going to call and what he/she is going to say. Recently, we worked with salespeople to identify their “Top 5” opportunities in their territory that they are not currently working. These “Top 5” should be pursued for 60 – 90 days. At that time, you can re-evaluate each, and see if you might exchange one or more for another more promising opportunity.

Once a salesperson has decided on their “Top 5”, research can begin. What is the business problem that these companies have that you think you can help them with? Who in that company is the best person to contact? By confining your research to your “Top 5”, you focus your effort on a smaller group that has the highest probability of success.

Like buyers who conduct research on selected potential vendors, salespeople should also research and follow their “Top 5” prospects. Google Alerts, industry analyst evaluations, LinkedIn and even Facebook can help you get ready for your prospecting calls.

Once your research is complete, you are ready to begin your pre-call planning. In your first call, you only need prospects to expresses interest and curiosity (“Tell me more”). You should be prepared with verifiable facts about your company that are relevant to the person to whom you are talking. Your prior preparation will enable you to sound more professional.

3. Practice - For some reason, salespeople think that the ability to react spontaneously is a value-add to their career. Time and again, we see salespeople who refuse to use prospecting tools because they feel like it’s remedial, they sound scripted, or it makes them uncomfortable. Yet, when we listen to their spontaneity in prospecting calls, it usually sounds awful.

Create your tools for a good phone conversation. A well-composed phone script will help salespeople to focus on a critical issue that has a high probability of existing at prospects’ locations. A good prospecting script should be given to the prospect in a window of twenty seconds; otherwise, you will lose their interest. All you want them to do at this time is to say “Tell me more.” If they do, you want to be prepared to introduce your company by describing how it has helped other people in their industry, focusing on facts, not opinions. Be prepared to tell prospects a reference story about how you and your company helped another person with a similar job title or in their industry to solve a relevant business issue.

The next part of practice is to sit at your desk, before you start phoning, and read out loud from your tools. Make sure that you are comfortable with the exact words that you want to use and practice it until the timing is natural. A good exercise is to read your phone script into your own voice mail and then listen to it. As you listen, take notes as if you were hearing it for the first time. This will let you know if you have any words that are tongue twisters, any ambiguous terms or if your timing is not right. If you do this four or five times, you will sound much more natural, and appear much more confident in your delivery.

4. Perform - Clear your desk of everything but your research, your tools, and a clean note pad. Then, like they say in the Nike commercial, “Just do it!”  In the first 20 seconds, your phone script should ask the prospect, “Are you curious?” A good phone script can also be used with an administrative assistant or in a voice mail. If they say, “Tell me more,” be prepared to introduce your company with three or four facts that are relevant to the prospect. Tell your reference story. You’ll be surprised at how many prospects will open up and tell you that they have that same problem at their company.

At this point in time, you can qualify their pain – their critical business issue. Ask questions like: How big is this problem? Is this issue something that is of a priority that you want to address now? How much is this issue costing you? The answers to these questions will tell you if this pain is significant enough for the prospect to take action. If it is not significant enough, then you can offer a menu of other issues you hear of most often from people with the same job title.

5. Follow-up - Log your activity. Record the date, the person you called, the issue you inquired about, and the result (e.g., voice mail, admin, etc.). Make sure that you keep track of your successes. For example, how many of those calls generated prospect interest and curiosity, how many prospects admitted pain, and how many qualified the pain? Don’t be afraid to adjust your script for your next prospecting session.

Master the critical skill of prospecting and you will PROSPER!Send a letter to every prospect you spoke with, confirming your understanding of their business issues, the reasons for the business issue, and the next actions to be taken.

If you prospect on a regular basis and do it the same way every time, you will continuously improve both your tools and prospecting skills. Nothing overcomes the fear of prospecting more effectively than mastering this critical skill. Those salespeople who can do so need never worry about phone-a-phobia again, as they will forever be immune.