A Sales Guy Consulting Blog

Do You Have the Guts?

It takes guts to be a leader. It takes real strength to be a leader. Unfortunately, these characteristics scare people, they scare companies. They disrupt the status quo. They challenge the systems. The create chaos. They create unpredictability. Corporations thrive on predictability and the status quo and unfortunately the cost to maintaining the status quo is the loss of great leaders.

Do you have the guts?

There has always been a lot of discussion about which is the best approach to sales team development; activity based management or results based management. I’m a 100% in the results based management camp. I don’t believe there is only one way to get something done or to improve a sales persons selling skills. Activity based management narrows the approach, because the activities being managed come from the top and don't rely on selling skills. Activity based management relies on compliance. The approach is defined and then everyone has to follow it. It assumes there is only one way to get something done and that you’re doing it.

Activity based management is stifling. It removes creativity from the process. It removes ownership and employees end up feeling like cogs in a wheel and not true contributors.

Results based management however, gives people the ability to approach a problem the way they see fit. If going to networking events and social media is a better lead generator for you than cold calling, then network away. I’m not going to tell you how to get your results. Get the results however you need to. What I like about results based management is it embraces peoples unique perspective on solving the problem and getting the desired results. It gives them freedom. The military calls this commanders intent.

In my opinion, results based management is a far better approach than activity based management.  But, what happens when the results aren’t there? What happens when someone isn’t getting the results? That’s were the “freedom box” comes in.

I created the “freedom box” several years ago. It represents how much freedom I give someone when they are making their numbers or the results. If the results are there then the employee has all the freedom they want. They can do anything they feel is necessary to be successful. The only things outside the big box are unethical things or things that could bring down the team. Other than that, the box is pretty big with lots of options. They have lots of freedom.

However, if results start to suffer. If the numbers aren’t there, if the employee is having trouble getting the expected results, the box starts to shrink.

When the box shrinks, there is less freedom. More things are outside of the box. If it’s outside of the box, it’s not an option for them. I remove the freedom to do unproven or overly unique and creative things. They are now outside of the box. We move towards the basics. When the box shrinks, I spend more time challenging approaches. I ask more questions. I demand more metrics and status updates. The employee still has the freedom to determine their own path, just not as much. Despite the smaller box, activities are still not managed only monitored for results.

If overtime, results are still not achieved and progress isn’t made the box get’s even smaller.

When the box gets this small almost all freedom is gone. Almost everything is outside of the box. Focus is on fundamentals and proven methodologies. The employee has a limited time to turn things around. We develop a plan on how they are going to get the results. The plan is reviewed regularly and more approval is required. There is heavy engagement between the employee and management. Results have to be present quickly. Despite the lack of freedom, there is little activity management. There is some, but it is often in the form of collaboration.

If results are still not achieved, a good fit is lacking and we agree to part ways.  What I don’t start doing is manage their activity. Activity based management doesn’t work in sales. If you have to manage activity you have the wrong people. Good people know how to get the job done. They know what works for them and what it takes to get the results. If your employees have to rely on you, your direction and your approach to be successful you don’t have employees, you have drones and drones are only as good as the process they are programmed to execute. Too much changes too quickly to rely on drones.

Provide the direction, let folks now the expected results, then give them all the freedom and tools they need to get the job done. If the results don’t show up, shrink the box, but don’t tell them how to do it. Once you’re telling people how to do it, it’s  over, just get a new employee or do it yourself.

1. Do you have your version of the freedom box?
2. How much freedom do you give your team to get results?

This is part 4 of an 8 part series on account governance

Relationships are the hardest element of account governance to write about. It’s hard because it’s difficult to measure. It’s not objective. There isn’t a paint by numbers process to create relationships, to know if you have the appropriate ones etc. Relationships are critical to good account governance, but it’s hard to put them in a box. Later in the series I will talk about account cadence. A good candence can help you manage the relationships, but it can’t build them.

This being said, understanding the critical nature of the relationship to an overall account governance is critical.

I remember early in my career a peer gave a presentation about two types of relationships. He talked about the person at your customer that would always answer your calls, who would accept your invitations to lunch and could always be counted on for a good game of golf. This relationship would always invite you into deals and could be counted on for support, BUT when it came to the really big deals or the core business affecting opportunities they would be conspicuously quiet.

This peer of mine then went on to talk about another type of relationship. He talked about the customer who called you and asked for advice. This relationship wasn’t always available for lunch or golf, but always invited you to the strategic business discussions. This relationship made few decisions without getting your insight. This relationship always made sure you were not only part of the big deals, but asked for your help in crafting the RFP and setting the strategic direction.

It was during this presentation, I first heard the term; Trusted Advisor.

There are clearly different relationships when it comes to managing accounts. It’s not good enough just to have a “relationship”. You have to have the right relationship, with the right people across many aspects of the organization.

The “relationship” I’m referencing in this pie chart is the second one. In an account management environment it is critical to develop a trusted advisor relationship or partnership where you’re seen as an information source, as an influencer.

Getting to this point requires a perspective AND an approach that is not product centric. I’ll say that again. It’s not product centric. If the conversations tend towards product you are not headed towards the influencer position.

To become an influencer requires a different perspective. It takes gambits, not transactions. It starts with your customers perspective and works out from there. It takes a tremendous amount of information about your account, the things your products and services enable and more. It’s more conversations than presentations. Most importantly, its having information your customer doesn’t have. It’s being smarter than your customer.

Being smarter than your customer is no small order. I rarely see people with this skill. Its magic when it happens.

The right relationships, with the right people, on the right level are a critical part of account governance. Build them on value. Build them on substance. Become an influencer. There will be plenty of time for golf, after they’ve called you to ask how to . . . ?

Tomorrow: Part 5
I’ll talk about cadence and how to manage the killer relationships you have.

Part 1: Account Governance - [The Ultimate Sales Process]

Part 2: Account Governance - [Vision]   

Part 3: Account Governance - [Account Plans]

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.

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."