A Sales Guy Consulting Blog

I get a lot of questions about building sales processes. It’s one of the things I most help companies develop. Sales process is often misunderstood. Most sales people and companies describe sales processes something like this:

Prospect>Qualifiy>Opportunity>Propose>Evaluation>Negotiate>Commitment>Closed/Won

The words can vary, but almost all sales processes or pipelines are linear and offer very little in the way of actually selling value.

Most sales processes are simple and clean phrases designed to tell management where a deal is in relation to closing.  What they should be is an outline of the specific steps, decisions, requirements and processes that are part of your customers buying process.  Every company, product and service is naturally bound to a buying process or a set of steps that are almost always present during the selling process.  A good example of this is the test drive.  If you are a car salesperson, what do you think the chances are you will sell a car without a test drive?  I suspect the probability is rather low.  Therefore, the test drive is a critical step in car selling, sales process.   Not understanding the importance of the test drive in evaluating the probability of selling a car is a huge handicap.   In the example above, where is the “test drive”  What stage should it be in?  Why?  Without the test drive specifically called out in the sales process the pipeline model above does very little to give context to the actual selling elements.

If you want to build a really good sales process, you have to understand how your customers buy.  You have to know what’s most important to them, how they evaluate new products and services, how and when they allocate budget, who needs to be involved, how decision are made, how terms and deals are negotiated, etc.  Knowing how the customer buys gives you the ability to map your sales process with the buying process of the prospects.

If you know that 80% of the time you sold your widget, you gave a demo, it was put in the customers lab, marketing had to sign off, and you had to get procurement to buy off, you have the beginning of your sales process.  These real world, buying triggers can now be put into a stage like above, taking a linear process and making it vertical as well.   Demo could be under “Qualify,” preventing any unqualified customer from moving to an opportunity that didn’t get a demo.  Lab implementation could be part of the evaluation phase. Marketing sign off could be in the propose phase.  Each phase consists of real world buying actions or triggers that outline HOW the actual buying steps prospects and customers take occur.

A well crafted sales process provides more insight about the customer than it does about your sales organization. It measures how well your sales organization is aligned with the buying habits of your customers. It prevents sales from selling the “wrong way” to the right people.

We’ve spent years with a narrow, introspective view of a sales processes.  They’ve been designed to help sales organizations get a handle on close rates, probabilities of close, forecasting etc.  The problem is, they rarely map to how the customer buys.  They haven’t aligned with the customers buying process. Customers buy the way they want. They have evaluation and decision processes. They have authority hierarchies. Therefore, to have a sales process that truly provides the accuracy and data to run an efficient sales organization, requires a sales process that looks exactly how your customers buy.

Know how you customer buys. It makes all the difference.

You are faced with a limited budget, new or established products, a sales team that varies in strength and experience, competitors that are trying to kick your ass and a board and CEO that are demanding more and more revenue. As the head of sales (CSO, EVP, SVP, VP) you have to create a sales strategy that will deliver under ever more trying circumstances. 

To successfully do this, you need a specific, well laidout, plan of attack. Unfortunately, what I've found is most sales organizations don't have a strategy, they have goals. 

I recently met with the Chair and the CEO of a web based company. During our conversation, they shared their sales strategy. Their key strategy, get new logo's and net new business and move away from reliance on existing accounts. Great objective or goal, but this is NOT a strategy. 

Saying you are going to win the war by storming the hill is not a strategy. Saying your going to win the war by storming the hill with infantry on the flanks, calvary up the middle, archers for support and cutting the enemies supply line from the rear, is a strategy.  

Sales strategy is the "HOW" your organization is going to deliver the revenue and "get new logo's."  A solid sales strategy is multi-layered and capitalizes on market, product, team or other types of opportunities. 

A sales strategy must start from the demand side of the equation. It has to answer;

1. Does my strategy capitalize and align with my buyers investment strategies? 
2. Does it create demand or respond to latent demand? 
3. Does it take into consideration how my customers buy?
4. Does it leverage an internal strength and/or unique company advantage?
5. Is it capitalizing on an undentified market or industry trend or shift.

I created this spreadsheet earlier in my career. I designed it to make sure I had the right team in place to execute my sales strategies and to increase sales. Over the years, it has continued to amaze me with its accuracy in predicting performance AND its ability to triage. Rarely has the team or a sales person been above a 7 average and not met their goals.

Building teams out of people requires a focus on the job as much as the individual. Measuring people is easy. It’s an individual exercise. Measuring teams, that’s a little different. To build a good team, you have to focus on the job.

To build a good team requires focus on the entire effort, not just the individual players. It requires an inventory of all the elements needed to be successful. What I’ve found is, by taking an inventory of the role(s) and evaluating the team collectively, gaps are identified. It’s these gaps that impede performance. Identifying these gaps allows them to be addressed and fixed.

Each quarter I would review my team against a similar chart. The assessment matrix is for me. If asked, I will share with individual employees. However, this is NOT meant to be a performance review. I have a separate performance review process. (My team assessment and individual performance reviews are intricately linked). I use this process to understand how each member of my team is performing against the critical elements of the job. I identify gaps and target my efforts toward closing the gaps. I enjoy this exercise. Identifying the gaps is a rush for me. With out this process, I would miss too many revenue impacting and team performance issues.

With amazing accuracy, the lowest scores on the chart have always aligned with the problem areas in my organization. By reviewing this chart (an example chart, not real), I can tell you that this team most likely has no succession planning, which leaves the company vulnerable if someone leaves. They lack a career development process, and some of its rising stars maybe in jeopardy of leaving. This chart tells me there are real people problems on this team that need to be addressed. It also suggests this team is very flexible. By looking at their highest score, Coachability, this team is flexible, agile and responsive. Addressing issues and problems are not a challenge for this team. High coachability gives me confidence the team can respond to the people problems. 

This process is also great for finding the poor individual fits. Not only am I able to see the teams effectiveness, I can see how the individuals “FIT” into the team. Those in red are dragging the team down. The goal is a collective team score of 7.0 or higher. However, to see where the problem player(s) are (those with scores of less than 7.0) is critical. I use the individual scores to help with performance reviews. The goal is to bring the individual scores up, in order to bring the team scores up. 

Every organizations chart should look different. They must be customized for specific roles and positions. Every leaders chart will contain different criteria. Take the time, understand what is critical to make your team successful, put in the chart and then measure it.

Having a view into your team takes the guess work out of it. Knowing the players is great but knowing the team is awesome.

Remember, players score, teams win!

One of my favorite sales phrases is; "stop drilling, you've struck oil."

It basically means, you've made the sale, stop selling.  

Sales people have a tendency to over sell. Afraid they haven't secured the deal, the sales person misses the commitment signs and keeps on selling. 

This sales video does a great job of demonstrating the "goal line fumble"  

Call what you will: 

• stop dilling, you struck oil
• goal line fumble
• don't sell past the sale

This is a guest post from Kyle Porter, Founder at SalesLoft.  SalesLoft is a Boulder Techstars company. They are creating a killer sales tool for sales people.  Their goal, provide sales people with timely, actionable information, that will get them closer to the sale.

Kyle offers some great sales advice in this post, enjoy! 

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A year out of school, I was running a division of a professional services company. I sold software development to regional tech companies. Our buyer was busy...& they had a lot of "recruiter-type" sales reps calling them asking for stuff. 

It was a crowded sales landscape...I had to learn to break through the clutter.

It's worse today. Buyers are busier than ever & they won't let you waste their time. In order to connect, build relationships & get a shot at solving buyers issues, you have to do more. I call "doing more", selling with sincerity. In my opinion it's the best way to sell.

Sincere sellers:

• Don't ask questions which they should already know the answers. They ask the follow-ups
• Only sell to those whom they genuinely think they've got a good shot at helping
• Find out about their buyer's company (history, milestones, agendas & mission)
• Find a way to make their buyer smile.

Back at eHire, we did these things and about 9 months into my gig there, I found a really cool trick. Here's an example of stacking your cards in the favor of sincerity.

The landscape: We sold software services. It was best to sell those services to people who needed them. 

The problem: The buyer was busy and it was hard to break through the noise

The solution: Built a web scraper that would go to the top 80 prospect sites & monitor any new job postings. Whenever they'd add new ones, it would automatically email me with the results.

The result: I knew every-time one of my top 80 prospects was looking for software resources, I'd call them immediately with the solution and convert more leads to closed deals than by any other prospecting method. 

It was an "out-of-the-box" way to get an edge & make the engagement much more sincere. 

Think about it...what can you do to come to your buyer with more sincerity?

I was in my first executive role, V.P. of National Sales. It was my first week on the job. It was a new company and I was at a conference. The first day on the floor, one of the territory reps asked me if I'd be willing to meet with one of her prospects. She said she was about to close the deal and wanted my help to get her over the final hump. Ten minutes into the conversation, not only did I realize the deal wasn't going to close, but that I had a least one bad sales rep and if the rest of the team was anything like her I was in trouble. It also suggested I had manager level challenges.

During the meeting it was apparent the prospect was no where near making a decision, never mind a decision to buy from us. They were still in the discovery phase. The customer didn't understand our unique value. They were still evaluating their technical options and most importantly they were struggling with budget. There was absolutely NO EVIDENCE to suggest this deal was going to close.

Sales can be emotional. The reasons for poorly forecasting a deal close are many. There is pressure on the sales people to tell the manager what they "think" he/she wants to hear. There is fear of failure. There are missed objections. There are missed buying signs. The competition makes a last minute push and steels it away. The reasons are countless.

To stop the insanity, ask for evidence. When it comes to getting a better understanding on whether a deal is going well or not and if it is going to close ask for evidence. Leave the emotion, and "I thinks" at the door. If sales people are specific and deliberate in customer conversations, the evidence will be clear. Little will be left for interpretation.

Clarify deal closing questions with: "What evidence do you have that it's going to close?" Responses need to be factual. They need to be rooted in specific, measurable, relevant information.

Answers such as;
"We are the front runner.", "My contact told me we are going to win it.", "We are positioned well." etc. lack evidence. Your job as the sales leader is to dig deeper. Ask probing questions that provide the evidence to support the claim.

Questions such as:
"Why do you believe you are the front runner?", "Who at the organization shared that with you?", "Are they the decision maker?", "Why is it going to close on X date?", "Why do they have to buy NOW?", "Can the competition cut their prices or offer additional services free and cut us out?", "Why don't you think they will?", "Why do you think the prospect won't change their mind if the competition gets aggressive?" etc. The objective is to get as much evidence as possible on why the deal is going to close.

Some of the best sales advice I was ever given was to ask for evidence. As sales leaders it's your job to hold your team accountable. Requiring evidence is key to doing just that.

Evidence is crucial. In strong sales organizations deals are "lost until proven closed."