A Sales Guy Consulting Blog

The guys over at Sales Loft have come up with a creative matrix outlining the future of sales and marketing.  

I like where they are going with this. 

Reach is becoming increasingly critical in sales. Reach has always been important in selling, however we've typically called it our "network" or "rolodex."  Reach isn't something new, it has always been part of selling success. Now that social and the Internet are on the scene how reach is created and leveraged for selling is changing rapidly and becoming increasingly important. 

Sincerity, like reach is not new to sales. Also, like reach, social media and social tools on the Internet are dramiticaly changing how sincerity is leveraged in selling process.

As the friction to reach is diminished, the ability to engage sincerley is improved. Building a selling approach designed to capitalize on reach and sincerity is where the win is!

Way to go Kyle, great visiual.  

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? 

Rejection is part of sales. It's unavoidable. Not everyone is going to buy what you are selling, therefore you will be rejected.  

In spite of this fact, many sales people struggle with rejection, hampering their ability to get deals closed and move with confidence. 

When we are afraid of failure we move tentatively, we are unsure and it shows in how we operate. 

Failure of rejection isn't just a "sales person" problem. Everyone lives with some level of fear or rejection. 

This guy Jia Jiag was rejected by a major VC for investment in his company. He was so dejected he didn't know how to deal with it. After doing the research and learning about how rejection works, he decided to get better at handling rejection. 

For the next 100 days, Jia is creating crazy, unrealistic request designed to have him be rejected. In this one, Jia asks to be a live Abercrombie model. 

Jia's video's are hilarious, entertaining and creative. He's asked to cut the Best Buy line on Thursday night of Black Friday. He's asked a car sales person to teach him to sell and he's asked an employee at Krispy Kreme to make a donut Olympic rings. 

Check out Jia's videos. They just might make it easier for you to accept rejection and that would make you a better sales person. 

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.

“You are the CEO of your own business.”  I said this all the time during my years leading sales teams. I would say it to every sales person and sales team that worked for me. I believe it.  Great sales people are like CEO’s.

More than any other position, sales has a tremendous amount of autonomy.  Like a CEO, this freedom gives sales people an infinite amount of lattitude in how they are going to attain quota.  Sales is a performance based role, like that of a CEO. Therefore, the best sales people approach sales like a CEO.

Great sales people, like CEO’s

• Leverage others to help them accomplish their goals – they don’t try to do it all themselves.  Great sales people know how to leverage the entire organization. Good and average sales people try to do it all themselves.

If you sell, getting people to change their minds or switch is part of the job. Sometimes people already have what you’re selling and you need to get them to try something else. You need to get them to switch. Getting people to switch is like selling to the monkeys; hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. No one is paying attention.

We don’t like to switch. We are normally very happy with our choices and unless there is a compelling reason, we will defend our choices to the end. We don’t want to listen to anything new, because we’ve heard it already. We don’t want to see an alternative, because we’ve seen it all before and we don’t want to talk about anything new, because there is nothing new to talk about. Considering a change without a compelling reason calls into questions our original decision and we don’t like to think we originally made a mistake

Getting people to try something new is hard. It’s even harder if you don’t have a compelling reason.

People don’t switch just to switch. This is especially true in b2b sales. To get your customers to switch, create a compelling reason. Make it difficult NOT to change. It can’t be because your new. New isn’t compelling. Save your customers 2X more money. Grow revenue by 25%. Increase productivity 2 fold. Shorten production by 15%. Reduce operating costs 30%. Shorten the sales cycle by 30 days. Make a real impact.

Selling to the monkey’s isn’t easy, they aren’t going to pay attention for a different banana. You need to bring ice-cream covered in chocolate. They’ll pay attention then.

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! 

We just launched our new eBook: How to Hire "A" players. 

Making your number or "winning" in sales starts with getting the best people. Like a sports team, the best sales team has the best sales people on the field. 

Too often I hear sales leaders lament over their inability to pick the right sales people. They complain that sales people are too good at selling themselves. Confused and frustrated the sales leader ultimately makes a bad hire. This is NOT an uncommon challenge for many sales organizations, but one that needs to be avoided. 

Hiring great sales talent is a skill of the best sales leaders. Developing the skill and a repetable hiring process increases the chances of making your number and increasing sales. 

The How to Hire "A" players will help you build a process to ensure you are hiring "A" players. 

If you suffer from the following, this eBook is for you: 

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 7 of an 8 part series on Account Governance

A saying of a good friend of mine is “we’re at the blunt end of the stick” and when it comes to sales he’s right. Sales is on the tip of the spear when it comes to the company. They have the relationships with the customers. Sales has access to what is going on. Sales is responsible for making the revenue happen.

Knowing this, sales owes it to the organization and to themselves to communicate what is going on. To keep the company informed and abreast of what is happening sales needs to deliver robust, simple, reporting schemes to the organization.

When it comes to reporting, I don’t think there is one size fits all. However, there is certain information every company needs to track. The baseline sales data that needs to be collected, and believe it or not ISN’T in all companies, is funnel or pipeline data, closed business, and revenue.

Beyond the baseline data every sales person and company needs to have their own set of metrics and reporting.

To build a good reporting structure it’s important to know what you want to measure. Far too often sales organization measure the same things; revenue, profit or gross margin, and funnel. As I said earlier these are must haves. But, sales organizations need to go further. Good account governance adds it’s own set of KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) to the standard metrics.

Choosing what to measure will be specific to each account and each sales organization.

KPI’s I’ve found valuable in the past:

Wallet-Share
Forecast/Outlook
Key Programs
Competitive Wins
New Product Wins
Losses
Product % of revenue (what % of revenue comes from what products)
Key Deals
Dependencies (things the sales team depends on to make or close a deal that another functional group is responsible for)
Linearity (the consistency of sales, does sales come in evenly or in major swings?)
Forecast accuracy (does the team actually meet their stated forecast goals, what is the % of forecast accuracy?)
Net New Customers
Lost Customers
Upgrades
Customer Satisfaction
Demo’s

When it comes to reporting the thing to walk away with is; it’s extremely important to identify the critical components of your sales environment and business and report on them. Build a dashboard that allows a quick snapshot of where you are. This should be done at the management level as well as the account level. The most successful account managers I’ve seen create their own account dashboard and KPI’s. They act as a guide, a benchmark, allowing management and account managers to see where they are going and what needs to be addressed. It allows for proactive management.

In addition to a dashboard and KPI’s, there is an internal reporting cadence that is a must have. It’s the quarterly business review or account review. To me there is only one way to execute a QBR. Each member of the team has 3 hours each quarter to update the entire team on what they said they would do, what they did, what they didn’t do, what they learned and what they will do next quarter. This approach to quarterly business/account review drives tremendous accountability into the process. Traditionally, QBR’s waste everyones time while the presenters regurgitate the same old information of what they did, regardless of whether or not it’s what they said they were going to do, they avoid calling out failures, or missteps, they don’t address what they will do moving forward etc. Traditional QBR’s lack accountability. I make them as simple and straight forward as possible. We only address what it is we said we were going to do, what were our goals and objectives, did we make them or not. Why? Where does that leave us? Can we make up the losses? If so, how? What are we going to do different? How do we know that’s going to work? What are next quarters goals and objectives? etc. The QBR’s are solely focused around the goals, initiatives, and tactics committed to at the beginning of the quarter.

Reporting is two things, what is being reported, (the information) and how it’s being reported, (the cadence.) Successful sales teams and account teams pick the right things to measure and have an internal reporting cadence of accountability. It’s that simple.

Previous Posts in the 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]

Part 5: Account Governance: [Account Cadence]

Part 6: Account Governance: [Account Strategy, G.S.I.T.'s]