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Sales Channels Are Driven By The Client

administrator — Thu, 17 May 2012 09:19:58 GMT

Many years ago the only channels that most organisations would use would be the direct and indirect sales channels. The promotion of the product would be carried out by marketing in the form of advertising campaigns, newsletters, direct mail, exhibitions, seminars, etc.

As technology became available and affordable companies employed web sites and e-marketing campaigns trying to drive interested parties to engage so that they could be pursued as leads.

The biggest revolution today is that technology is not only available and affordable to companies, but to anyone. That allows for innovation not only in companies but in other institutions and by budding entrepreneurs such us Mark Zuckerberg, and his classmates at Harvard University, Dustin Moskovitz, Eduardo Saverin, and Chris Hughes. Another is Twitter founded by Jack Dorsey.

Both Twitter and Facebook have given enormous power to ordinary people to communicate with each other. The extension of this is that the same people are talking about products and services, things that are the ‘rage’ that you must have, e.g. iPhone, or venting their feelings about awful experiences to warn others and by doing so letting the offending company know in a very public way.

In business we are embracing the use of media such as Twitter and Facebook, but the biggest challenge is how to integrate them into one cohesive strategy that is supported by systems that not only are used to store the information received, but can manipulate it and use it as sales and marketing, and customer service intelligence to improve products and services that are being offered and ultimately to grow the business.

The challenge for system suppliers is to produce CRM, sales performance management, sales force automation, revenue performance management, marketing management systems that are adaptable to the changing ways that the client wishes to go to market, whether the client is reviewing or buying products and/or services. There are systems on the market that are catering for the new channels and the use in generating awareness, interest, and business. It is getting a system or systems to deal seamlessly with the whole client process from marketing, to sales, through to customer service that is presenting problems. There are companies that capture information from their web site, but have another system to capture information about their marketing campaigns. Then there are companies that have an additional sales management system.

Many systems that are implemented today seem to be rigid in structure that is if one was to compare them to a shape they would be represented by a cube. What is needed are systems that help businesses manage all of the client facing process seamlessly, both from the selling and buying point of view, and also adapt to the different channels that the clients are using during the process. In this case there can be a specific shape at any one moment, but it can change depending on the behaviour of the market and the clients. It can be a cube, but it might have to be any given shape at any given moment. The system needs to be based on a framework that can easily be manipulated to take any form at any time.

The reason for this is that the client is running the show, especially how he wishes to be engaged, and we have to be receptive to it both internally and externally of the business.

'Shoot The Salesman' - Sales Comic - No.19

administrator — Tue, 15 May 2012 10:54:44 GMT

Selling Is A Noble Profession

administrator — Wed, 09 May 2012 11:03:00 GMT

We are all selling most of the time. We are trying to convince people of our point of view, we are trying to gain respect, and we are trying to get people to like us. Apparently, this does not count as selling because a lot of people associate selling with sharp practices.

I read two articles in the Financial Times ‘Selling deserves a corner office’ and ‘Portrait of a perfect salesman’, by Philip Delves Broughton, that highlighted two key areas that contribute to the image that sales has.

NB. To read the two articles listed you will be required to register for an account with FT.com At the time of writing this blog post, you are able to sign up for a FREE account which will allow you to read "8 articles per 30 days".

In the article ‘Portrait of a perfect salesman’ it describes how much attention to detail is required when selling. Sales is about understanding people and adapting to the situation you find yourself in. The example given is that of the Majid rug peddler in the souk.

‘Majid is a master at categorising sales leads (the people who walk through his door) and tailoring his approach. Sometimes you need to be patient. At other times, you must treat the customer as a king, to make them feel powerful and inclined to exercise that power by buying. Sometimes you need to teach, to establish your authority with customers who take you for a mere peddler. He compares the different modes of selling to gears in a car. “You change because the gear needs changing,” he says.’

The article discusses Apple and Salesforce.com in great detail in relation to Majid.

Apple is a success story about traditional selling meeting modern selling. The approach taken was to cater for the different types of people entering their premises and also to have enthusiasts selling that would extol the virtues of the Apple products. The premises would be laid out in such a way that it would cater for people to have access to their Apple products as soon as they walked into the premises, then there is the red zone where sales are made, and lastly the family room where customer are helped with issues that they may have. All this is carried out by teachers, photographers, filmmakers, etc. who are selling the product because of their belief, credibility, and trustworthiness.

Salesforce.com is not much different than Majid in their approach: they employ different strokes for different leads, from a person purchasing the use of salesforce.com by paying via credit card, to sales being generated by an army of corporate sales people.

Unfortunately the image that the general public has is not about the noble art of sales, but about the sharp practices and the commission based sales person.

For more 'Shoot The Salesman' sales comics, click here.

This is not helped by the lack of focus by academic institutions in the main, and to some extent professional bodies, on sales as a key part within the professional courses they run for people that will become leaders of industry, e.g. MBAs, chartered exams, etc. The first article highlights the restructuring of business schools to be more academic rather than vocational.

One of the most poignant paragraphs within ‘Selling deserves a corner office’ is the following: In his book Birth of a Salesman, Harvard Business School professor Walter Friedman observes that “while business schools have continued to offer some type of sales management instruction – usually within a larger marketing course – they do not offer courses in salesmanship skills. The topic remains, just as it was in the 1910s, more suitable for popular how-to books and memoirs of successful salespeople than for academic classes. Economists, for their part, still tend to ignore the role of salesmanship in the economy”.

With greater use of technology sales faces another massive attack as to whether sales people are needed. Just look at LinkedIn to see how many discussions are about social media and whether a sales person is needed anymore. Do we really believe that sales people can be eliminated from the process? The question should be how sales channels are changing as technology changes the habits of the client.

The most poignant statement I found in the article is:

'Technology creates transparency and gives us more information. It should lead to better prospecting and franker negotiating. But so far it hasn’t eliminated the ghost in the machine, which remains the human interaction.'

Sales is a noble profession when it serves the customer.

'Shoot The Salesman' - Sales Comic - No.18

administrator — Tue, 08 May 2012 09:30:48 GMT

4 Steps To Improving Your Sales Performance

administrator — Wed, 02 May 2012 10:26:00 GMT

Over the last five weeks we have published a series of e-books on the theme of ‘Tips on how to develop predictability within your sales forecasting’.

The only way to establish predictability within your sales forecast is in the main to convert what you are predicting. It’s all about sales success.

Step 1 is about defining the sales process so that you can understand your customers buying habits and so plan your activities to enable them to make the decision to purchase from you as quickly and as painless as possible. A classic example where the selling and buying cycles are not in sync would be with regard to the sending out of pricing. There are many that would feel that as soon as client has asked for pricing it should be given, but without knowing the client’s needs how can you give a price? You might want to give indicative pricing to establish whether it is acceptable to the client, but do you want to go any further? Knowing when to give a quote in the sales process is dependant as to where the client is within their buying cycle.

Step 2 is all about qualifying the opportunity as you go through the sales process. There is a need to justify where you are in the process based on key criteria that you use in everyday discussions to understand what is happening within an opportunity. Key criteria would include: Budget Availability, Contact with the Decision Making Team, Understanding the Decision Making Process, Fit to Client’s Requirements, etc. All too often a statement is used to identify where you are in the process such as; ‘we are at the proposal stage’, ‘we are at the presentation stage’, ‘we are the negotiation stage’, etc. The risk with this approach is that you are not monitoring each criterion on its own merits. An example of this would be to do with ‘Availability of Budget’. In one opportunity you could establish that the budget is available, but in another the budget will be approved by the Board on presentation of a RoI (Return on Investment) justification. How do you allow for such differences when you are using an option in a list of positions within the sales process?

Step 3 brings a common language when describing your position within the sales process for each of the opportunities that you are dealing with. It can be a series of percentage points that are clearly defined by the status of each of the criteria that are part of the sales process. If you take the example of ‘Suppliers’, it could that at 50% the status for ‘Supplier’ would be ‘we are on supplier list’, 70% ‘we are on the short list of two’ and at 80% we are the preferred supplier. There will be more than just this criterion that will contribute to each of the percentage points.

Step 4 brings credibility to all that has gone before. It is where you substantiate what you are saying is your position within the sales process. Just a simple sales plan to record information to verify what you are reporting as being based on fact. An example of this would be in identifying the decision making team. The sales plan would require the name of the person, his or her position within the company, the issues they are trying to solve, whether you have addressed them and how, and whether they have bought into your solution. You now have some facts about the decision making team instead of assuming that all decision makers have been met and discussions taken place to understand their needs.

In summary the 4 steps are about bringing discipline, order, and best practice into sales and so improving your sales performance.

Download any one of the 4 steps and the other 3 will be automatically forwarded to you:

'Step 1: Define Your Sales Process'click here

'Step 2: The Qualification Profile'click here

'Step 3: For Consistency, Decide On Your Milestones'click here

'Step 4: Substantiate Your Position click here

'Shoot The Salesman' - Sales Comic - No.17

administrator — Tue, 01 May 2012 10:02:32 GMT

Step 4: Substantiate Your Position - 'Tips on how to develop predictability within your sales forecasting'

administrator — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 09:01:00 GMT

Following on from the last blog, this is the final step in building a sales process for your company.

This is the final step in the process to greater predictability within your sales forecasts. The aim has been not to discuss how to put a sales forecast together, but to make the sales forecast a by-product of the sales qualification process. In this step we need to clearly demonstrate that we are in possession of information that substantiates our position at any one time. To do this we need to put in place a very simple mechanism that we can use to record the information we gather. As with steps 1 to 3 it has been about you thinking clearly what you do and what you prospect is doing whilst you progress through the sales process. Be ready to refine your sales process because you will learn by experience whether what you have documented and what is happening are in alignment.

I hope that the documents you have received have been of benefit in your sales environment. Please feel free to contact me if you any questions.

Best of luck with step 4.

Register now and you will be sent 'Step 4: Substantiate Your Position'. Furthermore if you didn't download the previous steps they will be automatically sent to you.

'Shoot The Salesman' - Sales Comic - No.16

administrator — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 09:48:45 GMT

Step 3: For Consistency, Decide On Your Milestones - 'Tips on how to develop predictability within your sales forecasting'

administrator — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 11:44:40 GMT

Following on from the last blog, this is the next step in building a sales process for your company.

Continuing on from step 2 when we developed the qualification profile we now have to developed a common language, the prospect rating scale, that is used by all in the sales environment to understand what is meant when a sales person refers to a sales opportunity being at a given milestone, say 70% chance. It will minimise if not remove the subjectivity that is introduced in most sales management discussions because there is no clear qualification definition.

Next week in the final step we will concentrate on the collection of information that will substantiate where we are within the sales process. After all we would not want anybody to say that we are guessing.

Best of luck with step 3.

Register now and you will be sent 'Step 3: For Consistency, Decide On Your Milestones'. Furthermore you will automatically receive the next document and if you didn't download the previous steps they will be automatically sent to you too.

'Shoot The Salesman' - Sales Comic - No.15

administrator — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 08:44:44 GMT

Step 2: The Qualification Profile: Measuring Progress Through the Sales Process - 'Tips on how to develop predictability within your sales forecasting'

administrator — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 10:49:32 GMT

Following on from the last blog, this is the next step in building a sales process for your company. I hope you completed Step 1, defining your sales process, because in this step you will be developing a qualification profile that will give you a clear understanding as to the progress that is being made within each of the sales opportunities that you are dealing with. The qualification profile will also serve as an aide memoir as to what needs to be achieved by each sales person in each of their opportunities. Lastly, the Qualification profile will also assist you in refining your sales process as you build up more and more data based on past experience in using it.

Register now and you will be sent 'Step 2: The Qualification Profile: Measuring Progress Through the Sales Process'. Furthermore you will automatically receive the next 2 documents and if you didn't download 'Step 1: Define Your Sales Process' that will automatically be sent to you too.

You will need to have completed Step 2 to be able to carry out Step 3, so best of luck.

'Shoot The Salesman' - Sales Comic - No.14

administrator — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 09:50:18 GMT

Step 1: Define Your Sales Process - 'Tips on how to develop predictability within your sales forecasting'

administrator — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 09:45:00 GMT

Following on from the last blog, we are about to start the journey in developing predictability within your sales forecasting. The first step is the foundation to all the work we do within sales.

Register now and you will be sent 'Step 1: Define Your Sales Process'. Furthermore you will automatically receive the next 3 documents.

Understand your customer and you can map out your process. Having a well-documented process that is used by all within the sales team brings consistency in assessing where we are in each of the sales opportunities. Actively using a sales process and analysing the results helps us refine the sales process to get better results. So, predictability within the sales forecast can be achieved by consistently using the sales process and refining it based on experience.

The document outlines the steps that will help you define your sales process. Get to work as Step 2 will be available very soon.

Register now and you will be sent 'Step 1: Define Your Sales Process'. Furthermore you will automatically receive the next 3 documents.

'Shoot The Salesman' - Sales Comic - No.13

administrator — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 07:05:00 GMT

Tips on how to develop predictability within your sales forecasting.

administrator — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 09:05:00 GMT

How many times have I heard from clients and prospects alike that one of their main wishes is that they could rely upon sales forecast month after month rather than have to second guess what is likely to happen?

There are four key steps that I consider a B2B organisation should carry out that will help them establish consistency, accuracy, and trust in future sales forecasts.

Register and as a taster you will be sent a couple of free sample detailed process charts. In the coming weeks I will be issuing a data sheet explaining how to work through each of the steps.

Step 1 - Define your sales process. Build a chart of what your customer is likely to do throughout the sale and what you have to do for success. Identify all the key players and map out how they interact. You are looking to define and align the buying cycle and the selling cycle.

Step 2 - Identify the criteria within the selling and the buying cycles such as availability of budgets, understanding of the decision making process, identification of pains, solution fit, competition, etc. We then have to define the status for each of the criteria as you move through the sale and the timescale as to when that status will be reached, e.g, the criteria is ‘Contact with the decision making team’, and the status could be ‘One’- at the start, ‘Some’-15 days, ‘All’-30 days.

Step 3 - Decide on your milestones, e.g. 20%, 40%, 60%, 80%, or Red, Yellow, Green, etc. Now plot what status of each criteria will have been reached for each milestone. You now have a model that all can use to identify the status of each of the sales opportunities, which will bring consistency to the proceedings. We will all mean the same thing when we say 40% instead of our interpretation of what is 40%. I believe that if this model is missing then the sales person is justified in using his personal interpretation. Accuracy will come from reviewing the results we get from using the model and making the necessary refinements to give us better results.

Step 4 - We have to substantiate our position within each of our sales opportunities so we need to develop a suitable sales plan aligned to the model that allows us to document evidence that will back up our position with each of the opportunities.

Register and as a taster you will be sent a couple of free detailed sample process charts. In the coming weeks I will be issuing a data sheet explaining how to work through each of the steps.

'Shoot The Salesman' - Sales Comic - No.12

administrator — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 08:32:18 GMT

NEW SymVolli Video - 'What Do You Want From You Sales Performance System?'

administrator — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 15:12:34 GMT

We have spent some time recently work hard on a series of new videos, which will be released in the coming days/weeks which highlight the features, functionality, power that a successful implementation of SymVolli can bring to a company.

The first video was released today and can be viewed below, but we want to take this chance to say thank you to Tim Curtis of www.timcurtis.tv for all his help. He is a great guy, easy to work and full of ideas. Entering into a field such as video can always seem daunting but Tim put us at ease and helped us create some create great pieces.

'Shoot The Salesman' - Sales Comic - No.11

administrator — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 09:17:49 GMT

Why do I need a Gate Keeper?

administrator — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 09:02:09 GMT

Following on from last weeks 'Shoot The Salesman' sales comic cartoon No.10, "Why do I need a Gate Keeper?".

Because of the amount of people that want to make contact with me. I would not have time to do anything if I responded to every call or email.

Knowing that why do I regard other people’s gate keepers as obstructing me from doing my job?

Let step back and analyse the situation. I usually encounter Gate Keepers when I try to make contact with senior directors. Their Gate Keepers are also very busy and have heard the same approach one hundred, no one thousand times before and therefore they are on automatic pilot to terminate the conversation as quickly as possible.

Knowing that we need to think of doing something different that creates interest. It has to be something that is relevant to what is happening in their environment and how you recognise the signals and the issues involved and how you have helped in similar circumstances.

Do not go into a presentation when you make contact - concentrate on building up your credibility with the Gate Keeper. If you convince the Gate Keeper to allow you to continue you have an ally.

Let me give you an example.

Find more photos like this on FunnySalesCartoons.com

Obviously the salesman introduced himself as selling machine guns. The poor king is fighting a battle and does not want to hear about new weapons. He has enough weapons but not enough troops. What would have happened if he had turned up and said ‘I realise that you are outnumbered 3:1 but I can demonstrate to you how you can win this battle if you give me a moment of your time.’

The king could still have rejected the sales person because he is busy, but conversely his curiosity could have been raised since he has a massive issue and the sales person seems to have hit on it.

The Gate Keeper is only trying to qualify what could be of benefit to be taken further so whether it is the phone, voicemail, email, letters, think about what could be the issues that the person you are trying to contact could be facing and if you were in his or her shoes, what they would want to hear to arouse their interest.

'Shoot The Salesman' - Sales Comic - No.10

administrator — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 09:35:20 GMT

'Shoot The Salesman' - Sales Comic - No.9

administrator — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 10:53:35 GMT

Which came first, the IT strategy or the Sales strategy?

administrator — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 12:06:09 GMT

I was in contact with a colleague, John O'Hagan, whom I have been working with for many years, to discuss the latest version of SymVolli, our sales performance management system and the reasons why trying to convince people to change their outlook on sales is so difficult. This is what he had to say.

Hi George, As always very timely of you. I am sure you have a crystal ball.

Difficult for me to stand back and see how it could get the attention of the people who need it but still need convincing. That's because I'm already a convert and have grown up with your product and seen it continually being refined and filtered into its USP. I still think that the USP is pointing the company towards the next action necessary by your number one skill in qualifying the prospect to the extent that the sale is a foregone conclusion as you are only dealing with things that can be converted. You have if you like invented the perfect funnel in which the only thing that can come out of the nozzle is an order.

It's been my experience or mistake to end up in roles where the company is not sales led. Instead it is a manufacturer or contractor or shareholder whose perspective and objective is not sales (seems a strange thing to say but Selling is not their motivator). Put another way they are proud people who believe that people will just simply turn up and buy their products and services. This is really well portrayed on the Dragons Den where nobody really gives a damn about the idea or the company. The focus is the investment and the reality is how quickly the cash injection can be returned. The number one solution being to sell the company using an exit strategy. Not much focus on Sustainability with that approach.

I think my only real feedback is that you can capture more audience by pointing out that wherever the company is being led and whatever the core activity of the company is, SymVolli captures the data and turns the taps on in the sales room. It then takes the liquid flowing out of the taps and turns it into high quality wine, which customers keep asking to have more of and are prepared to pay more for.

I am currently working for another client with a worldwide server network who could not tell me how much they had sold the same product for to the same customer who was trying to reorder it again. The client however could tell me everything he had purchased in the last 4 years and what percentage fluctuation he was getting in the price and the exchange and tax corrections for every country he was shipping to. In the same company there was a 63% variation on price in the same year that nobody could explain.

So, it's getting that hook into the company by finding out which system is their core system. It sure as hell is not a Sales system.

And to finish on an automaton note, "I'll have to get back to you Sir as we don't seem to have your account number in front of us and we need your postcode." I tapped the lad I heard saying this and said to him that new construction sites don't have postcodes and the customer does not have an account because he was a new customer that we had spent weeks convincing to try us, etc. etc.

Find their core system and then ask the simple question "How does that interface to your Sales system"

Over to you, are you sales led?

'Shoot The Salesman' - Sales Comic - No.8

administrator — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 09:31:34 GMT

'Shoot The Salesman' - Sales Comic - No.7

administrator — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 09:48:43 GMT

Sales Performance Management Systems – Are they dealing with the Cause or the Effect?

administrator — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 12:57:04 GMT

Last week I received emails from two well-known sales performance management systems providers promoting webinars. In both cases the theme was sales compensation management. I dealt a bit deeper into what they offer and found that the focus of the sales performance management system is compensation management, making sure that you pay your sales people what they are due based on their performance.

My immediate thought was surely that the compensation earned by a sales person is a consequence of their performance, and therefore it is the effect. I then asked myself if that is the case what is the cause and I came back to the same answer that I have been focussing on for more years then I care to mention, the effective performance of the sales person.

So why as soon as sales performance management is mentioned the discussion focusses on compensation?

I believe that the answer is that like most things compensation management is a tangible item that relies on historic data and therefore people are much more comfortable in dealing with it. Looking at sales performance management with respect to forecasting accuracy and achieving goals, is looking into the future and therefore becomes an intangible and a very uncomfortable subject.

Many an experienced sales manager will say that his 'gut feel' is telling him or her that something is not going to happen or will happen, and in the main they are proved right. So what is it that makes them such experts by the mystic power of gut feel. It is experience, repetition of events, repetition of results, repetition of situations. It is understanding patterns and trends.

A sales performance management system has to be able measure the efficiency and effectiveness of a sales person. This is achieved through the rigorous use of processes that have been defined by sales management as best practice. The use of the processes should yield trends that will help management refine them and also identify any personal development needs of the sales person. Transactional analysis will quantify the activities that are undertaken, but will not necessarily indicate the effectiveness of the activities in relation to each other to get through the sales process and win the sale.

So the next time you see or hear mention ‘Sales Performance Management’ is it to do with the cause, getting the sale, or the effect, the compensation in getting the sale?

'Shoot The Salesman' - Sales Comic - No.6

administrator — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 10:46:01 GMT

'Shoot The Salesman' - Sales Comic - No.5

administrator — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 09:15:32 GMT

Start of a big week: SymVolli 8 is released on Wednesday, February 8th

administrator — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 09:07:00 GMT

Some new features include:

Time sheet, Resource & Project Management with the ability to measure profitability of a project in terms of forecast time vs actual time taken
Configured products: the ability to build products and included associated products so important items are not missed off proposals sent to a client
Enhancements to the 'Process Builder': new Tag Cloud attribute, making tagging of contributing 'Knowledge Base' cases easier. A support engineer can address an issue, tag it with a given keyword(s) and then publish it to the 'Knowledge Base' for further users to take advantage of
Product Attributes: the ability to build attributes so as to add characteristics to a product. Values can be entered within the 'Price Book' i.e. Weight, dimension of a product or from within a sale i.e. computer serial no., amount of RAM, hard disk space etc.

To read about further features download the brochure 'SymVolli - The Product' or 'SymVolli - Features, Advantages & Benefits' for further information.

NEW 'SymVolli - Features, Advantages & Benefits' brochure - Sales Performance Management (more than just CRM) - now available

administrator — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 17:19:02 GMT

As promised, last week, in preparation for the launch of SymVolli 8.0 we are and will be releasing new datasheets, brochures and documentation, the second of which is now available. Click here to download 'SymVolli - Features, Advantages & Benefits'.

The brochure 'SymVolli - Features, Advantages & Benefits' looks at SymVolli and highlights some of the key features within the system and how they can be of benefit to you.

Click here to download 'SymVolli - Features, Advantages & Benefits'.

NEXT WEEK: 'SymVolli - The Experience Of Others' - what other people have experienced and said of the use of SymVolli.

'Shoot The Salesman' - Sales Comic - No.4

administrator — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 10:22:25 GMT