A Sales Guy Consulting Blog

Seth Godin wrote this piece last month and I thought it was killer: 

"When making a b2b sale, the instinct is always to get into the CEO's office. If you can just get her to hear your pitch, to understand the value, to see why she should buy from or lease from or partner with or even buy you... that's the holy grail.

What do you think happens after that mythical meeting?

She asks her team.

And when the team is in the dark, you've not only blown your best shot, but you never get another chance at it.

The alternative is to start in the middle. It takes longer, it comes with less high-stakes tension and doesn't promise instant relief. But it is better than any alternative.

Starting in the middle doesn't mean you're rushing around trying to close any sale with any bureaucrat stupid enough to take a meeting with you (or that you're stupid enough to go to, thinking that a sale is going to happen.)

No, starting in the middle is more marketing than sales. It's about storytelling and connection and substance. It's about imagery and totems and credentials and the ability to understand and then solve the real problems your prospects and customers have every day. It's this soft tissue that explains why big companies have so many more enterprise sales than you do.

You don't get this reputation as an incidental byproduct of showing up. It is created with intention and it's earned."

 We've all received sales advice that says start at the top. I think that's bad advice.

Early in my career I fell victim to the "starting at the top" advice. I was selling to a billion dollar telecommunications company who had a change in leadership. The new President and COO was a friend of mine. When he was announced, I just about jumped out of my shoes. I instantly started counting the money. The money, I hadn't made yet. 

Bill, the new President and COO was a fairly close friend. He had actually tried hiring me a few years previous, so I had unfettered access to him. After he started, we had a number of meetings and he told me he wanted my company to do a number of things for him. He laid out what he was looking for and then told us to work with his CIO.  

Needless to say the CIO had not been in the loop and did nothing but passively resist every move until everyone finally gave up. 

I was never able to grow the account through my relationship at the top. 

Seth's post and my experience suggest the old addage about getting to the top is a must and the only way to go is a flawed approach. 

But, hey Seth and I are just two people. What do you think? Is starting at the top, the best way to go? Do you start at the top? 

We don’t control very much in the world of sales. We like to think we do. We build neat little sales processes. We have weekly, monthly and quarterly business reviews. We make commitments to the sales managers, to the executives and to the shareholders about how much we are going to sell and by when. We build fancy reports to show we have things under control. But we don’t We like to think sales can be controlled. It can’t.

We can’t control when our customers will buy. We can’t control how much they’ll buy. We can’t control who they’ll buy from. We can’t control what they’ll buy and why they’ll buy it. There is not much we can control in sales.

What we can do is influence. We can deliver “best in class” customer service to influnce them. We can create innovative, easy to use, products that deliver exceptional value. We can be easy to do business with. We can give away our products to our best customers. We can be responsive. We can listen. We can make our customers our number one priority.

We can’t control very much in the world of sales but we CAN influence a whole lot of things.

To increase sales focus on what you can influence, not what you can’t control.

Sales leaders, pull out your 2012 sales strategy right now. Go through it and take note of how much of it is dedicated to sales support and enablement. How much of the budget is allocated to sales improvement or support tools?  How much of the plan focuses on training? How much of the strategy focuses on value proposition development? How much of the strategy focuses on marketing and collateral support? How much of the plan DOESN’T focus on direct go to market and numbers making? If  the plan as good coverage in all of these things, you have a good plan. But if your plan is like most, it’s lacking in almost all of these areas.

The best thing sales leadership can do is support the sales team. In order to do this, you have to build team support and enablement into your overall sales strategy. Like a go to market strategy, critical analysis is paramount.

Take a look at your plan then ask a very simple question. What does my team need today, that they don’t have to make the number? Ask the question over and over. Each answer should then become an initiative. If the answer is nothing, unless you’ve already asked the question, your not being honest with yourself.

Sales teams are not ready made, out of the box organizations. They require care and feeding. The best organizations understand this.

Ask the team what they feel is missing. Ask them what they think would make it easier to make their number. Ask them what you could provide to accelerate sales. Get familiar with the team’s weaknesses and strengths. Identify initiatives that will offset the weaknesses and leverage the strengths. Getting to your number, growing sales, and moving product is more than setting revenue targets and creating motivational rewards and recognition. Getting to your number means getting the most out of your team and that requires support.

Know what your team is lacking, know where it is weak, know where it is strong. Know what could make it stronger and then give it what it needs.

What is your sales support and enablement strategy? Do you have one? You should!

Twitter is a real tool for making your number and part of a legit sales strategy. It connects you to your customers. It gives you insight into your competitors. It generates leads. Twitter is a power sales resources for making your number. 

Don't be Allen! 

The feedback has been fantastic on our recent 8 Part Series on Account Governance or account management. 

Therefore, to make it easy to get to all 8 posts, I figured I put them all on one page. This way if you're like me, you won't have to click so much. 

I had fun doing the series and hope it helps you get more out of your existing customers. Also, be sure to download all the helpful templates. They make all the difference in execution. 

Enjoy!

Account Governance — Part 1

Introduction to account governance and why it matters

Account Governance — Vision

The importance of establishing and account vision and how to create one that works.

Account Governance — Account Plans

How to build the perfect account plan

Account Governance — Relationships

Learn how to build account relationships that actualy turn into new business, not just more lunches. 

Account Governance — Cadence

How to build a pro-active account cadence that keeps you ahead of the competition and connected to the account. 

Account Governance — Strategy

Learn to build an account strategy that increases revenue, creates more opportunity and grows the account.

Account Governance — Reporting

Learn how to use reporting to know if the account is healthy, how to increase revenue and manage resources. 

Account Governance — Tools 

Identify what tools are at your disposal and which you should use to better manage your accounts. 

What I like most about strategy in account management is, it’s like a window into how the goals are going to be accomplished. Earlier I talked about the account plan. In the account plan there is a goal section. The goals are the things to be accomplish with in the account. The strategies are the approach to making those goals a reality.

One of the best selling skills a sales person can have is the ability to develop a sales strategy. The best strategies take into consideration the unique elements of the account. This is where the analysis phase of the account plan becomes so important. By focusing on exactly what is going on in the account, where the account is going, who the key influencers are, what the market is doing, what is happening with the competition, etc. the strategy will be successful.

I’ve found, based on the account assessment, there is almost always more than one strategy. Most good account governance plans have multiple strategies for each of their goals. Another way to look at it is if you have 4 goals, you would probably have at least 8 strategies, 2 for each goal. In some cases you may have 3 strategies for each goal. This is the template I’ve used with my teams, again feel free to use it. This would be one strategy for one goal. You would use an additional one for a different strategy for the same goal.

Strategies are absolutely critical to success. To create good ones, a strong, robust, thorough assessment has to have been done. Strategies rely solely on information. Strategies are only as good as the information that made them. A good account strategy needs a good account assessment.

Account assessment is the greatest weakness in sales. Sales people aren’t known for assessing environments up front. They are excellent at reacting. Unfortunately, reacting is what creates pricing wars, and RFP responses. Reacting does little to allow sales to “manage” an account. This being said, the assessment section of the account plan is absolutely critical to creating good account strategies.

To be successful, strategies need execution. To execute on a strategy the initiatives and tactics that will be deployed need to be called out. For instance, if a goal is to increase revenue by 10%, a strategy may be to sell a new product to the account. To sell that product a set of initiatives must be determined. An initiative could be to demonstrate value of XYZ product to accelerate the customers stated goal of increasing customer satisfaction. Notice this initiative gives life and purpose to the strategy of introducing a new product to increase revenue. Once all the initiatives have been identified, the details need to be ironed out. These details are the specific tactics required to ensure the initiatives happen. Using the example above, a tactic could be to work with product marketing to establish the specific impact XYZ product can have on the accounts customer satisfaction goals. It could be meet with account VP to determine how they measure customer satisfaction etc. The tactics are very specific steps that will be taken to drive the initiatives, that support the strategies, that get you to your goals.

Account strategies are more than a high-level approach that sits on a bookshelf somewhere. Good account strategies are born out of the account plan. They leverage the well researched account and organizational assessment. They have specific initiatives and tactics to ensure they are achieved.

Successful account governance wins or loses on the ability to execute against an account strategy. Keep them linked, be specific and attach them to the Approach section of the account plan and they will be achieved.

This is part 5 of an 8 part series on account governance

Cadence is a powerful tool for managing an account. Unfortunately, when I ask sales people about their cadence strategy or approach a get a lot of weird looks.

Cadence is how you drive an account. Cadence has the greatest impact in influencing the customer. It allows you to manage relationships, track progress, drive accountability, and engage all the stakeholders on a regular basis.

A good cadence consists of a few critical elements:

1) weekly progress meetings
2) quarterly business reviews
3) specific, regularly scheduled stakeholder meetings
4) clearly defined agendas and objectives
5) stakeholder commitment to participate

Cadence structure is not complex. I use this template your welcome to use it as well.

(I’ve filled in the table for info purposes only, you will need to determine the appropriate cadence structure for your accounts)

The complexity and value of cadence comes in the execution. To build a highly effective cadence think in terms of your account vision, your account plan and the account relationships. Notice in the one above, a regular cadence has been established between the customer CEO and the Company CEO, the IT department and the company CTO, both account teams, Marketing and more. The cadence is specifically designed to connect many different functional groups at multiple levels in an organization. Its purposely not intended to be horizontal. Its meant to be both horizontal AND vertical.

Ask, who should be regularly communicated with? Who influences the success or failure within the account? How can they influence the account plan and the ability to be successful? Once this is determined cadence brings it all together.

To make the cadence fly and get the most out of it, be proactive. Gain support from your relationships to engage on a regularly scheduled basis. Build weekly, monthly, quarterly and semi-annually events to monitor progress, set strategic direction, provide insight, address problems, deliver updates, identify challenges and reset direction. Set specific agendas and actionable objectives for all the meetings. The meetings need to have value. They need to be seen as worth the investment for both parties. If this part isn’t set up correctly, they entire process falls apart.

When a cadence is firing on all cylinders the account is being managed holistically. The right relationships are not only in place but engaged, from the executives on both sides, to the those accountable on a day to day basis, everyone is engaged. Issues are ferreted out early and addresses quickly. New products, services, and offers are introduced early and feedback can be provided by the customer strengthening the probability of adoption. Hiccups in the account business are identified earlier minimizing unforeseen drops in revenue or orders. This improves forecasting accuracy. Issues and challenges rarely blow-up as they are identified and addressed before they can get out of hand. And, one of my favorite benefits is the ability to ask for favors. If you’ve been in sales for awhile you understand the importance of being able to go to your customer and ask for help, to take a shipment early, to accelerate an order etc. When a strong cadence is in place, those important favors are much easier to ask for.

Cadence is about being proactive. It’s about managing an account from top to bottom on a regular basis. It’s about avoiding the reactionary approach most account manager find themselves in. Cadence gives the customer and you a platform to manage everything and anything associated with the account in a effective, proactive, way.

A good cadence brings to life the vision, the plan and the relationships.

Previous Posts in Series: 

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

Part 2: Account Governance - [Vision]   

Part 3: Account Governance - [Account Plans] 

Part 4: Account Governance - [Relationships]

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.