SymVolli

Do You Like Getting Wet?

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 09:15:00 GMT

Do you like getting wet, feeling cold? I expect the answer is NO. So you rely on the weather forecast to help you decide what to wear and whether to take an umbrella. In the main you know that the weather forecast is going to be reliable because a great deal of experience combined with technology is used in getting it as accurately as possible.

So why do you accept all the stress that an unpredictable sales forecast brings?

Is it because you believe that this is how sales is done and nothing can change it?

Do something about it! Get some order and discipline into the way your sales team works so that you can start trusting the sales forecast.

With your sales experience and with SymVolli, our sales qualification and forecasting system, you can start to trust your sales forecast.

We will be more than happy to have a brief chat to establish whether this is an issue.

Why not give us a call on 01276 683449

Don't shoot me I'm only the sales person

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 09:16:00 GMT

Following on from Hugh Stafford-Smith’s article about People and Talent, I believe that the sales person is a very visible target and therefore in the absence of other information he is the first person to come under the microscope when things are not going according to the sales plan.

I have two issues with this approach: firstly, that the sales person is the one of the most expensive resources within any organisation and to get rid of him should be done with due care and attention;, and secondly the sales person is the key component in the overall activity of how a company goes to market.

In an ideal world the sales person would be trained fully on the solutions and products he is selling; the markets into which they are being sold; the problems that are being addressed; and the benefits they bring to the purchasing company. So it could be that it is not the right product for the right market at the right price. Add to this that the message by marketing might not be one that is resonating with the people that should be influenced in at least looking at the product. Please, before everybody jumps on my back about the relationship of marketing and sales, I am one that believes that the two work together with the specific aim of achieving the business goals that are set. What I have described is an over simplification of many situations, but it serves as an example that sales is a multi-dimensional challenge.

We have developed SymVolli based on the fact that selling is not only about the sales person but about all the different factors that influence the sale. So, to be able to review and refine any parameter within the sale you must collect historic data in the most efficient and painless manner possible. SymVolli collects that data as the sales person does his job in managing each of the sales. That data is turned into meaningful information for management to make decisions via the use of the business intelligence functionality within SymVolli. You could say that we are able to track the behaviour of not only the sales person but of the products, markets, customers, etc. with very little effort.

So next time the finger is pointed at the sales person for not making his or her targets, just ask one question, are there any other factors that should be considered before the magic words are uttered, ‘You’re Fired’.

Business Intelligence With SymVolli 7.5 - Accessibility To Information

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 14:10:00 GMT

In the last newsletter we sent out to our subscribers we alluded to a number of announcements on some of the new elements and features that will be shipping with SymVolli 7.5 which will be released in January 2010.

In the first announcement of our newest version of SymVolli we decided to focus on 'Business Intelligence' in line with the new Business Intelligence functionality that SymVolli 7.5 has. I havewritten a short article discussing the issues that companies face in using Business Intelligence and how we deal with BI in SymVolli 7.5.

Business Intelligence should be affordable and accessible to large and small companies alike. Download our article andtake a look at how we think Business Intelligence should be tackled.

Going4Growth Partners With Nomis Limited and SymVolli

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 09:02:00 GMT

As we are tackling the business critical issue of sales performance improvement we need to develop our business partner channel based on people who have the expertise in this field and who are comfortable in dealing with senior management. Graham Whittle is a professional that has the experience both in sales performance improvement and in dealing with senior management. We at Nomis Limited and SymVolli look forward to a long and prosperous partnership with Going4Growth.

As a Sales & Marketing Professional, I am always looking for ways in which I can add further value to my clients. said Graham Whittle, Managing Director of Going4Growth. A recurring theme I hear from business owners is the challenge of how to manage a company working with sales forecasts they can’t trust. Typically, this is because they offer low predictability being based on the ‘gut feel’ of sales people and often times stuffed with low quality leads. Symvolli uniquely addresses this challenge head on: it enables business owners to see the future more clearly and to make investment decisions with confidence.

Graham Whittle is an experienced Sales & Marketing Professional with a successful track record working with both SMEs and larger international corporations. During his career, Graham has devised and implemented sales & marketing growth strategies for industry leaders in manufacturing, distribution and services across a wide range of industry sectors in the UK and overseas. He has managed marketing programmes in Europe, the Middle East, USA, SE Asia and Australia. Graham established Going4Growth in January 2005.

Going4Growth works with the owners and directors of ambitious companies that are not winning as much business as they deserve, and who have taken the decision to make a fundamental change to their sales & marketing activities. Typically, these companies have hit a sales 'glass ceiling' and are frustrated in their efforts to break through by winning many more new clients to achieve their growth objectives. This is often despite having spent a lot of money, time and effort on various sales & marketing initiatives and 'good ideas'. Going4Growth helps them to develop and implement effective sales & marketing programmes that deliver £000s of profitable new business and realise their growth ambitions.”

Cameron Consulting - Leaders in Management Consultancy in the Public Sector Take the Next Step with SymVolli

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 12:00:00 GMT

In a world of change, it may be forgiven for thinking that public sector and large corporate industry giants are organisations that frequently need catching up with the ever moving world that we live in. As agents of creating new and effective organisations, Cameron Consulting are at the forefront of the movement to introduce critical new ways of thinking to make such organisations better, more efficient, more effective and more importantly - more profitable.

Cameron Consulting is a management consultancy firm founded in 2003 by Neil Thody primarily helping public sector and construction industry firms. Today the expansion of the business boasts an impressive portfolio of professional services clients and an extensive network of partners within their business channel. It was with this business partner channel in mind that we were first consulted with the idea of creating an improved facility to manage the partner channel through their ‘partner portal’.

Through the flexibility of SymVolli, a partner portal with all the functionality required of a partner portal was created but as the implementation of the system has progressed the full magnitude of the power that SymVolli can offer to a business was seen. Not only does SymVolli manage the functionality of business partner activities such as registering interest in public sector tenders, collaborate and view all opportunities etc. but SymVolli will be used to measure effectiveness so that channel performance can be improved.

Neil Thody, managing director of Cameron Consulting said As an SME business, we wanted to explore the use of web-based technology to bring our network of associates closer together and to operate more as a ‘partner network’ than the traditional ‘associate’ model. We wanted to create a kind of social network for our partners to collaborate on projects and to utilise the combined forces of highly qualified professionals to enable us to compete with larger organisations. In using SymVolli, our original objective has been achieved. However, as our learning of the capabilities of it increases, we see far greater potential internally as a management tool in managing projects, performance monitoring and e-commerce. Our journey towards greater efficiency has just begun!

George Petri said the implementation of SymVolli within the Cameron Consulting working environment has been an exciting challenge in pushing the boundaries of how organisations go to market. Cameron Consulting have been a strong ally in the development of SymVolli from an internal sales performance tool to a means of managing and monitoring projects no matter whether the channel that is dealing with it is internal or external. We in turn have shown how using SymVolli as a sales performance management system will help Cameron manage the business more effectively. We are now looking to push the boundaries even further working with Cameron.

In the ‘7 habits of the new and effective organisation’ by Craimer, that exemplifies the Cameron Consulting ethos – Utilising Technology as an effective resource is one of the contributing factors to how they help other companies improve their businesses. Recognising the benefits of technology such as SymVolli shows by example the commitment they have in helping not only their clients but also their own business in an ever changing world.

Cameron Consulting – www.cameron-consulting.co.uk

GUEST ARTICLE: Are you missing Business Critical data that could bring you the greatest return?

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 11:08:00 GMT

It is with great pleasure that I introduce this guest post from one of our associates Hugh Stafford-Smith a leading management consultant for SABA Consulting based in Guildford. In this post Hugh talks about business critical data which heavily ties in with what we believe in developing our sales performance ideology.

For the last ten years we have been obsessed with the benefits of effective process. We have made a mantra of efficiencies of using CRM solutions and “ologies” from our chosen sales process Gurus. In doing so we have created a sales force that delivers by numbers doing everything to avoid putting data into systems that they see have no benefit to them and are purely a management tool for keeping tabs on them. I can’t tell you the number of sales people I have met who’s forecast goes from 10% to 100% in a matter of minutes or how many sales people who constantly slip the opportunities at the end of each month with some excuse, normally blaming the customer.

I have a problem and it is twofold. The efficiencies to be gained from systems and process and therefore the percentage increase in revenues are falling off over time, secondly our customers and their markets are changing so fast that our processes and our thinking does not reflect these changes. Our customers’ expectations are also changing they don’t have the time or the inclination to spend time with sales people explaining their business. They expect us to know and add value through our knowledge of their key challenges and what solutions to provide that help them meet their business challenges. It is the end of the Pain Game.

This is not a polemic against process. It is necessary and does bring value to the sales cycle. My argument is however it does require significant effort to deliver and I believe the returns (albeit hard won) can be bettered when we focus on the forgotten element of process: PEOPLE and TALENT.

The argument for a focus on talent and people is simple. In 2000 McKinsey in their “War on Talent” survey observed that a sales “high achiever” delivered 67% more revenue than an “average achiever” and this in an environment where process has been the key focus. There are other important numbers that suggest that talent is key to increasing revenue. In the 2009 Dow Jones CSO survey they found that only 59% of company’s sales people made target and that 20% of the sales force deliver 60% of the company’s revenue.

Surely this is not good business in anybody’s book. So the BIG what if question has to be:

If we can have 70% of our team make target what would be the impact on the bottom line?
If we were to improve revenue from the 80% of the team by 10% what impact would that have on the bottom line?

The key issue has always been around TIME. Research again shows that those who manage sales teams spend 60% of their time with just 20% of their team;the top 10% securing revenue and the bottom 10% securing their cost budgets. This has meant the rest of the team is managed by exception. The consequences of this have driven the reliance on process and systems rather than on nurturing and focusing on working to deliver talent. People are complex and the talents, skills and motivators that drive them are not easy to uncover and nurture.

However over the last few years new tools have become available that should now make this excuse no longer valid as they are able to show using statistical data what a “High Achiever” looks like.

Critical Business Data?

The leader in this field is currently SalesAssessment.com with an assessment tool called Fit-4 that looks objectively at the sales person in context to the role they perform ;or the role the company would like them to perform. This on-line assessment application looks at Motivation, Critical Reasoning, Behaviours and Sales Skills to provide an in-depth and comprehensive review of the individual. This is in itself a significant step forward but when combined to with data based on others performing this role it becomes invaluable because it will allow business to understand what a “High Achiever” looks like. The implications behind this for business are that now it is possible to hire into the business “High Achievers” knowing that they will deliver the additional revenue and will succeed. It also allows the business to assess the current team and have the commercial conversation about who they wish to invest in, how much they need to invest and as a result know how long it will take for these investments to pay off and what returns they would expect.

It is these tools that drive the ability for business to understand the Business Critical data on People and Talent and allows the next significant leap in increased revenue generation.

Hugh Stafford-Smith is a director at SABA Consulting who specialise in working with companies that wish to transform their revenue generation capabilities

http://www.sabaconsulting.eu/

The Ego Has Landed – Conflict and Cooperation Within The Company

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 11:00:00 GMT

In difficult times the phrase ‘we’ve got to pull together’ is never more appropriate… not that I think there is a time when this phrase isn’t appropriate, but when companies all over the world are facing tough decisions - co-operation, collective enthusiasm, dedication, strategy, process, and will are integral to being successful even in a bear market/recession.

So it confounds me when something as simple as ego plays a part in hampering the performance of any part of the business process. Effective strategy cannot be agreed upon because management personalities clash and each one has their own opinion on how best to proceed. Important decisions are stalled, delayed and impeded because the IT manager or the marketing manager or the sales director wasn’t consulted at exactly the same time as the other managers. The sales guy with twenty years experience won’t take that little bit of advice or coaching because he knows it all.

For an effective sales process to happen the relevant parties need to work together so that that everything works in relative harmony. I read an interesting article in the telegraph whilst I was searching for articles on the decision making process, ‘Honey bees working together to make group decisions’, which highlighted the effectiveness and cooperation that nature brings to difficult decision making (sometimes superior to our own). I couldn’t help wondering how effective bees would be if each one of them had personal agenda’s and egos – That Bee’s foraging location is completely idiotic, I simply refuse to look in that area. - Hang on, I wasn’t consulted on the new ‘bluebell’ pollination initiative, I will need a few more weeks of consultation before I can action that! – somehow I think they wouldn’t survive.

It galls me to see that in some organisations this mentality of cooperation isn’t adopted especially when faced with the challenges of modern times. Cooperation doesn’t mean agreeing with everything, nor does it mean that you have to like everything, however it does mean working with others. Anything that hampers, blocks the effectiveness of the sales process.

Don’t take anybody for granted

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 08:24:00 GMT

Recently I was working on a project where the client concerned was in B2B high value sales. The discussion centered on certain opportunities that had stalled. There was no definitive answer. On further questioning it appeared that there was only one person in each of the opportunities that was being continually contacted. On asking why this was the situation, the reply was that it was a sales matter and therefore the contact involved, the sales director, would make the decision. The comment used was ‘there is no need to talk to anybody else since he is the mechanic so why talk to the oily rag’. Shame because in that instance the oily rag was the IT manager and he has a lot of sway with the managing director.

Even the oily rag has a big part to play especially if there is an oil spillage. The mechanic needs the oily rag to mop it up.

Another phrase that has been used in the past is that you should only be dealing with the organ grinder not the monkey. Just remember that the monkey is holding the cup with all the money. The organ grinder and the monkey are a team.

Do not underestimate the power or influence anybody has within a team or an organisation!

10 Things To Ask Yourself When It Comes To Sales Performance

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 09:10:00 GMT

Last week we released a 'Sales Performance Management Crib Sheet' with 10 areas of sales performance that we think are important for sales people and managers to answer to keep an eye on the effectiveness of sales performance throughout the sales cycle. The 10 areas are by no means an all encompassing set of criteria and I'm sure there are ones that aren't covered in the crib sheet. The one page download is based on the principles that SymVolli, our sales performance system has been developed on.

So often, sales people and companies aren’t in need of blanket improvement in all areas of the sales process but can highlight one or two key areas where they need improvement. In line with the topics of the 'Sales Performance Management Crib Sheet' we are offering you the opportunity to get sales performance training and advice based on any areas that are identified as needing specific attention.

Why not download the 'Sales Performance Crib Sheet' and see if you are answering all the questions that need to be answered?

Tell me what you can do for me and not what you do!

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 09:37:00 GMT

I already know that. You are a sales person. I am not interested in a presentation of your products and your services. Demonstrate that you have the credentials for me to listen to you.

Do you know my industry and what it does?
Do you know the challenges it is facing?
Have you dealt with these problems in the past, and if yes what were the results?

Are the above unreasonable demands from the person you are trying to meet?

Put yourself in that person’s shoes, metaphorically speaking of course. How would you feel if a sales person sat in front of you and went on and on about what his company does and how wonderful it is?

With all the noise and interruptions of today’s business environment it is necessary to have an edge to get the person to stop and think. You could say it is like an ice cream van that plays its musical chime that attracts the buyer to stop the ice cream van and buy one. Not much different, except our contact has many ice cream vans going past his office and nothing seems to stir him. He has seen it all before. So what will catch his attention?

It’s got to be something that is thought provoking to catch his attention and for him or her to say ‘that’s new, I haven’t tried that before?’

The problem in the past with having so many ice cream vans doing the rounds is that companies have tried to bring some consistency in the purchasing activities by introducing a new function to the decision making team, the buyer. He might buy the ice cream, but more than likely he is not going to eat it. So how can I get to the person that’s going to eat it with such a rigid purchasing process in place?

What do you think?

Happy 1st Birthday To ‘Shoot the Salesman’, Our Weekly Sales Cartoon

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 10:43:00 GMT

A little over a year ago, I started doodling (though absolutely not in the middle of sales meetings… honest!). These doodles were varied in content from the surreal to those based on amusing real life situations in the sales world and so I thought of a web comic as a platform to publish these musings, mainly to entertain the sales people and customers that frequent the SymVolli website. And thus was born ‘Shoot the Salesman’ a weekly cartoon.

Today, and much to my surprise, I am pleased to announce the 52nd cartoon to be posted up. I say surprise, because I was unsure of how much content I could think of and how it would be received. Thankfully, I am happy to say that it has been very well received from those that read it and as yet I haven’t run out of material. Sales, it appears, is full of fun and humour and I hope that I can continue to create more fun for those in sales for the coming year as well.

For now, I leave you with a few of my favourites over the past year and hope that you too enjoy fun, laughter and humour in your business dealings.

Don’t do as I do, do as I say! – Services - do I need them?

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 10:20:00 GMT

'Mr customer, to get the most out of the system and to ensure that you cut down on the ramp up time and minimise any antipathy towards the system, training is essential'

Where have you heard that before? Maybe if you are in the business of selling something such as a system and you are also trying to sell training to the customer.

Yet when it comes to systems being implemented in high tech companies, the management team would say that they do not need it since they are computer literate and also the system should be intuitive and easy to use.

Agreed a system should be easy to use, but that doesn’t mean that one is going to get the maximum from it if it is not implemented properly.

In its purest sense it is the ‘application’ of the system that the training should address and therefore take training to another level. It should be about how to use the system within the working environment to achieve the company’s objectives.

Even then there is still resistance. Is it purely down to cost, or is it that the supplier has not shown the return on investment by training being carried out as well as the system being implemented?

The Sales Forecast Tug Of War

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 10:07:00 GMT

It seems that all is not lost and there is a great debate occurring about sales forecasting accuracy that gives me hope that the status quo ‘sales forecasting inaccuracy has always been like that’ is not acceptable anymore.

The tug of war is over the sales process. Two camps are claiming the right to the sales process. There are those that believe the sales process is a series of activities, Activity Based, and there are those that promote the sales process as the monitoring and managing of behaviour. Even within this group there is a divide as to what behaviour is being monitored, is it that of the sales person, the customer, the product in the market, the market itself, etc.

I believe that to obtain greater accuracy in the sale forecast one must understand all aspects of the sale whether it be the customer’s decision making process, the product suitability within in a market sector, industry performance, and economic, governmental and regulatory factors. Without monitoring all of them on a continual basis and maintaining the history of how each of the factors are behaving in certain circumstances it is nigh impossible to refine the criteria by which sales opportunities are scrutinised to gain an understanding as the probability of success of each opportunity.

There is another key factor, the behaviour of the sales person. Has he or she the experience, ability, motivation to succeed. I’ve left this factor to last but this is usually the first port of call for management when things are not going so well. In the inimitable words of Sir Alan ‘You’re fired’. Is that the easy way out? Have we looked at all the behaviours before coming to the conclusion that it is the sales person’s fault?

We need systems such as SymVolli that will allow us to monitor different behaviours and then we can decide what needs to be done.

Activity versus behaviour! Surely activity is a consequence of understanding behaviour. Once there is an understanding of behaviour one can decide what activity needs to be undertaken. Both have an important role to play, but not one at the expense of the other.

At least there is a debate and I believe it will lead to sales forecasting accuracy. What do you think?

TSSI Systems Limited – Leading UK Manufacturer of Biometric and Document Security Solutions Order SymVolli

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 10:53:00 GMT

It might seem that in a world of recession that business is slow. You might also get the impression that every business has battened down the hatches and are currently waiting for the media to tell us it’s OK to come out again. However, nothing is further from the truth. Business is flourishing and some businesses are taking a very positive attitude in developing and improving their business processes. This is exactly the case with TSSI, one of the UK’s leading manufacturers of biometric and document security solutions who a few weeks ago ordered SymVolli as their sales performance system.

TSSI are amongst a group of companies who have met the challenges of modern economics to expand and grow their businesses and as such required a system to help develop their sales process and manage their growth needs.

TSSI is a leading supplier of technology solutions for the verification of personnel and documents. TSSI offer security solutions for a variety of industries including the Police, automotive, healthcare entities, retailers, defence, public sector and financial services.

John Barker, General Manager and Head of Sales commented 'The sales team at TSSI have used a common sales tool that was perceived to be more than adequate, but once you questioning why a prospect has been sitting at 75% probability on a forecast sheet for several weeks it soon becomes apparent that a better solution is required. We appear to have found it and with excellent support from Nomis Ltd we are now able to match prospects against specific criteria to suit our business model. Being able to highlight issues on accounts early within the sales cycle means we will become more proactive and that in turn will lead to a much-improved movement within our forecasting. Being able to generate sales reports and produce proposals all on a standard house style from within the same product will make a significant difference to the efficiency of the sales department without damaging our brand identity.'

George Petri, Managing Director of Nomis Limited, the developer of SymVolli said we are fortunate to have a company such as TSSI as a customer because they have such varied challenges from high product demand to managing the channel and are going to be using SymVolli not only to track their sales forecast but to manage their sales process and beyond. We look forward to working with TSSI in pushing the boundaries of SymVolli to help them achieve their objectives.

IOD West Surrey Branch Sales Forum – Top Level Sales Exploration

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 09:51:00 GMT

I have been a member of the IOD for a number of years now and have often found the help and support that underlies the philosophy behind the IOD as an institution a truly inspirational thing. It was this basis that I approached Chris Ragg, the Branch chairman of the IOD West Surrey Branch about setting up the West Surrey Sales Forum so that top level executives, managers and directors could discuss sales issues no matter the size of organisation or market sector.

It is no secret that I am passionate about sales as a subject and that I believe that above all ‘Sales’ is the life-force by which any organisation, whether it is non-profit, fortune 500 or SME, lives by. Without the ability to sell, a company flounders and many of the ideas that many in the sales world talk about with regards to changing attitude, improving processes, fostering different mentality and culture etc. cannot happen unless the top level company directors have themselves embraced the idea of sales into the organisation.

The West Surrey Branch Sales forum intends to be a platform where discussion and ideas about sales can be thrown around and mulled over. Like the philosophy that drives the IOD itself, I see the sales forum as a way of developing an atmosphere where individuals can explore their own ideas with others so that they can improve their business. The last meeting that was held was on 21st May and we had a very lively discussion on the theme of ‘What is stopping me selling more’ some great discussions.

The sales forum is open to all IOD members and will be held at the Y Centre, Guildford on the following dates:

Thursday 16th July 07:15-08:45
Thursday 17th September 07:15-08:45
Thursday 19th November 07:15-08:45

For more information contact me directly or visit the IOD West Surrey branch website at www.iod.com/westsurrey

The Vicious Cycle of Sales Forecasting

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 17:03:00 GMT

Following on from George’s post yesterday and the article that we released (which we have had a great response so far) I thought that I would add to the discussion on sales forecasting and my own view point on why some of the issues that George wrote 10 years ago haven’t been addressed in company practices today.

As is my take on George’s article ‘Sales Fact or Sales Fiction’, the potential that sales forecasting offers to the business as a whole is circumvented by the sales managers need to use the sales forecast as a sales activity tool rather than as a sales measurement tool.

Part of the problem, in my view, is that the culture of sales management (in some companies) in some way adds to this need by creating a vicious circle of pressure and interrogation. If the sales forecast is inaccurate then the sales manager has no option but to haul the sales executives over hot coals to get a clearer understanding of where the business is at. Consequently, the sales executive knows that the sales manager is going to interrogate further, even if the information inputted into the forecast is correct because there is no trust in the system. The sales executive knows that the sales forecast is going to be used to micro-manage their pipelines, to double check their figures and basically to be used as a benchmark in the next sales meeting to whether that data is actually true. In an attempt to avoid this, the sales executive may be tempted to be over optimistic…incredibly optimistic. And so the vicious cycle goes…

In the meantime, all this activity is happening re-qualifying data on activity that has already happened rather than concentrating on what, where and how to improve for greater sales success in the future.

Sales Forecasts – Have We Actually Made Any Progress?

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 08:52:00 GMT

About ten years ago I wrote an article about Sales Forecasting in the business world and the trials and issues that companies at that point were facing in establishing accuracy, consistency and the role that the sales forecast should play in the running of a business.

It was with great surprise that I re-read the article I wrote a decade ago and did a little research and figured out that those very same issues face businesses today. Can this be right? Have we really not progressed that much in ten years?

Sales forecasts have the potential to affect a great many areas of the business, not just cash flow, but the resources of the company, manufacturing, stock control, marketing. In fact, I would argue that there isn’t a department in the company that isn’t affected by the sales forecast. Yet, companies seem to tolerate inconsistency, inaccuracy, alterations, sandbagging etc. Why? Is it because the problem of fixing those problems is too difficult or impossible?

I didn’t believe it then and I certainly don’t now. In fact, the sales forecast issue was one of the principal drivers in creating SymVolli as a sales performance tool in the first place. Sales forecasting isn’t and shouldn’t be a major issue both personally for sales executives or the business as a whole and requires actually a few simple but fundamental changes to sales mentality. In the first article of our new ‘Sales Performance’ series, I have re-written that very same article I wrote ten years ago with a modern edge to it. It is with hope that I wish that the next ten years sees the changes in attitude that don’t appear to have gotten through in the last ten.

Time Management : Buyers and Sellers Could Save A Lot More Time Being Up Front

Thu, 28 May 2009 12:36:00 GMT

You set up a meeting with a prospect and have a great conversation with the Director of Sales, the meeting is positive and the Director asks you to send some documentation going into more detail over the points covered in the meeting. You get back to the office and strike while the iron is hot by working on the documentation and sending it over. Several days later you follow up with a call to the office….no reply. Fair enough, they aren’t in the office, you email them….no reply. You wait another few days and follow up with another call…again no reply. At some point you are going to get the idea that the prospect is not interested but the time invested in following up has seriously drained your resources.

Procrastination is a very real issue in time management, a lot of people use it as a method of killing conversations but it isn’t good for buyer or seller. Hey, I have used it! Some cold calls I receive I’ve just asked for more literature to be sent through. I didn’t really want a new three piece suite, but I liked the caller so didn’t want to be too hard on him… which of course is wrong because that caller will follow up with a greater expectation…and what time do I save, really? I know that I will get a followe-up call by delaying. Avoiding that call until that person ‘gets the hint’ doesn’t necessarily save time either. Think about it, to evade that person you have to divert the resources of your personal assistant to take two, perhaps three, calls. OK, they may only last a few minutes but that adds up. That is just one person, how many cold calls do you receive a day? 10? 20? More?

If 10 people were to follow up 3 times over a period of time and each call lasted two minutes it would divert 1 hour to deal with all those follow up calls… and that is just 10 people. Now flip that onto the sales side of things, let us assume that it takes 5 minutes to familiarise themselves with your details and make that call each sales person would spend 15 minutes of their time in following a dead cause. By diverting 10 sales people you are collectively wasting 2.5 hours of other people’s time (and that doesn’t take into account the preparation work involved in sending out information to you). Just because that is spread over a period of time and you hardly notice doesn’t it mean that time isn’t being spent.

That time could simply be saved by saying 3 words “I’m not interested”. Some of us don’t like being that brutal but sales people don’t like wasting their time as I’m sure prospective customers don’t like wasting their time. So, how about cutting to the chase and being up front, if you are interested in what other people have to offer then explore. If you don’t then save everyone’s time and end it there.

Sales Panic – A Sales Game Based On a 3 Minute Sales Process

Mon, 11 May 2009 17:06:00 GMT

Being one for the occasional bouts of nostalgia I was at one point thinking back to my childhood and teenage years and evolution of the humble video game that I saw evolve from BASIC programming such as that on my first computer – the ever excellent Acorn Electron up to my latter console era with such classics as the Sega Megadrive. For many years I grew up with a basic platform game that involved characters moving along a very two dimensional stage usually to beat up some deserving ruffian.

Now, I am always on the lookout to try and break down barriers to learning in sales and the more ways to connect with sales professionals in whatever medium the better, and so I tried my hand at creating a sales based platform game… and here it is. Before you draw the conclusion that this is all I do here, I would point out that this game – rudimentary as it is – has taken many months of work in the 10 minutes here and there between projects that I work on here at SymVolli. The perfectionist in me is reluctant to release now (vertical movement of the salesman for a starter :-))- I could spend further months perfecting it – but for the sake of getting it out into the public domain; here it is.

What will you learn from playing this game? Very little I imagine but I like to think that from a sales process point of view you may infer some very small lessons namely:

1. Persistence in achieving the goal
2. Process – There is a right way to proceed and cutting corners, however small will not get the results.
3. Rejection – because you get rejected shouldn’t stop you going to the next person. You will get rejected in this game but I doubt you are going to feel despondent… so why should you in real life?

There may be more but for now, just give it a go and see if you can sell anything in the 3 minutes you have free to play the game.

Happy game play

SymVolli And Leading BPM Vendor Integrate Performance With Process

Thu, 07 May 2009 09:35:00 GMT

Shortly we will be announcing the official press release of our OEM partnership with Orbis Software which has opened up many channels of opportunity for our clients in managing their performance by integrating it with the powerful capabilities that Orbis Software's TaskCentre gives. TaskCentre's powerful Business Process Management (BPM) capabilities marry up nicely with SymVolli’s sales performance objectives giving customers an opportunity to drive efficiency as well as measuring effectiveness.

The Sales Performance Management arena is an exciting market for our BPM Suite. Removing the repetitive workloads from sales representatives will have a positive impact on their results. said Mathew Lidster, Sales Director for Orbis Software.

Workflow and process are an important part of being effective in the business world and SymVolli's focus on concentrating on how and why sales happens can now be integrated with process automation so that company procedures can be kept to - and less information get lost

By using such a powerful tool as TaskCentre within SymVolli we are helping our customers to work smarter not harder said George Petri, Managing Director here at SymVolli. At the most basic level we help our clients automate repetitive tasks, and at the highest make sure that key milestones are not missed in workflow processes such as getting, checking and authorisation for issuing of a proposal to a client.

Learning Through A Sales Podcast - Extra Sensory Perspectives

Mon, 04 May 2009 22:11:00 GMT

I am a huge fan of learning through different media. People learn in a variety of different methods and messages taught through one form can be reinforced through different forms so that lessons can be remembered. With technology seemingly growing at an exponential rate the delivery methods that we have for sales professionals is opening out for us to learn in the best ways for us. Sales podcasting is just one of those ways that sales professionals can engage with information from some really good sources, however, I think that there is a greater benefit to sales podcasting than just an extra sensory way of learning. Unlike the written word on the internet, sales podcasts are a way of really connecting with authors in a way that you can't by reading. You get to hear a person's voice and get to know their character, their sense of humour, what makes them tick...which I think lends to a greater way of learning, because in the end if you engage with a person's voice then you also have a different way of remembering information.

Our own sales performance management podcast is centred around expanding, reinforcing and perhaps just talking about reasoning, musings and trivia that compliment the various topics that we talk about in our articles and blog. George Petri, our Managing Director, hosts and talks on the SymVolli podcast and in it you really get a sense of what drives the direction that SymVolli as a system is produced.

For some other great podcasting resources, this past week there has been a lot of activity from some eminent figures in sales and sales management. The first is Brad Trnavsky's Sales Management 2.0 sales podcast co-hosted with Jerry Kennedy of Inside Out Solutions. Brad's podcast has been a ritual of mine as I download and listen to some fascinating interviews with some great figures on my way home from work (One of my favourites has to be with Steve Farber). This past week he has interviewed the very talented Will Fultz who discusses 'Rewarding Top Producers' - a very interesting interview and well worth downloading and listening.

Skip Anderson’s sales podcast is always jam packed with good information, much like his blog. Skip’s well thought out musings on selling are entertainingly told and in his latest podcast Skip talks about ‘The essence of selling’ which is a great analogical discussion comparing selling to the role of an umpire in baseball. – I certainly chuckled at how clever Skip’s daughter was on the comparison.

Tibor Shanto’s podcast article ‘What's in Your Pipeline’ is an intriguing discussion on the topic of sales pipelines. Tibor’s discussion is a great highlight of many of the issues that businesses have with regards to filling pipelines and the quality of what fills that pipeline. I found interesting Tibor’s discussion on the issue of ‘sandbagging’ which must frustrate many sales managers when sales people purposely omit sales information for fear of ‘micro management’.

Closer to home, Ian’s Brodie’s latest podcast on ‘lead nurturing’ is a great eye opener for networkers and business developers as Ian discusses the really important topic of following sales leads. Ian points out that 70% - 80% of quality sales leads will eventually buy from someone in 24 months – and unfortunately those leads don’t appear to be followed up. Ian’s podcast is definitely recommended for some quality advice on making sure that when they do make a decision it is with you that they make the sale.

Last, but definitely not the least, Karl Goldfield’s Sales Evangelist TV, though technically not a podcast but rather a video blog or vlog ties in excellently with the theme of extra sensory learning. With greater internet speeds available, learning online via sight, as well as sound and the written word is also a great way that appears to be expanding for online sales learning. Check out Karl’s past videos and check in to the live version of his next talk on ‘Thinking About Thought Leadership? Which will be airing on Wednesday 6th May at 7:30pm PST.

Here’s to learning and sharing online.

It Really Is Quite Simple. Know Your Customer

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 11:36:00 GMT

If you probably haven't already noticed, I have a penchant for historical stories and quotes. My initial foray into writing this post would have eulogised the oft quoted Sun Tzu who is attributed with the age old wisdom of 'knowing your enemy' and though the wisdom of this text is incredibly pertinent I quickly realised that for most it doesn’t really matter, because many aren't listening.

My wife told me yesterday that she had received a call from a company who wanted to put her top of the list of results on Google for her business website. After a preamble about the need to target web content to get maximum search potential the cold caller then went for the kill. “I can get you top of the list for Printers in Winchester” he said and then backed up this statement by adding “I had to search to the third page of the Google results to find your company when I typed ‘Printers' and 'Winchester’, which really isn’t good for you – you NEED to be on page one”

I can only imagine the initial elation that the salesman must have had in cornering his prospect and doing enough research to back up his statements. He had found the pain his prospect must undoubtedly be facing and was offering a service to remedy that.

“I am not a printer” my wife replied “and I couldn’t care less about appearing for that term.

“What do you do?” the caller asked. I like to think a little deflated at this point. If it was me I would have apologised and left putting this down to a learning experience well worth taking heed from… but no, here he was like Indiana Jones crusading further into hopeless territory while also highlighting his ignorance of his potential client.

“You haven’t even visited my website then?” my wife asked, to which he replied that he didn’t have time to visit every one of his potential customers.

The incident finished shortly afterwards with my wife highly unimpressed with the caller and having to put him off by curtly telling him that her current web designer (that would be me) knew a few things about SEO and that her current business demands were being met. As a side note, the mention of the word SEO also threw him off as he assumed that his prospects would be ignorant of industry terms and knowledge.

This experience was almost a carbon copy of another that I read (and listened to) from a well known telesales expert Art Sobczak in ‘A Recording of an Unprepared Caller’ via Ian Brodie’s sales blog (My thanks to Ian for reminding me where to find this article).

PS. My wife’s website, by the way, is the pulp press if you wanted to check out how this site could possibly be confused with a printer.

B2B Relationships Don’t Have To Be Lost – Continuous Contact Doesn't Mean Customer Stalking

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 14:18:00 GMT

Jack Welch once said that the greatest assets of any company are its people. I believe that this is only one part of company’s greatest assets - the other is its customers. Why do I believe that? Because satisfied customers will keep coming back to a tried and trusted supplier. Satisfied customers are the bedrock of any good B2B business. It’s all about relationships.

In a recession, many companies will look to their existing customers to support their own business but the preparation work needed in relying on current clients is laid throughout the entire relationship cycle. In my latest podcast article I discuss how B2B account management – which is the theme of our latest article which you can download – is the foundation of B2B companies and how systems and technology should be used and regarded in helping to maintain business relationships.

If a supplier calls out of the blue and asks to speak to you, perhaps to catch up and find out what is going on – alarm bells instantly ring. Customers aren’t stupid, they know that we are in a recession so calling up to ‘catch up’ is tantamount to declaring your desperation.

The key here is that continuous contact with the customer has to be maintained. Not only do you have to remain the customers backbone but also you need the contact to realise new opportunities. This doesn’t mean that you have to badger the client every day but only that there is continuance in the relationship – set the boundaries of your contact. If you are going to wait 2 months to call your customer up again then make it plain that you are going to do that and also give the customer the opportunity to reduce the contact time if they want it. Listen to my latest podcast and let’s continue to build on those relationships that we established and are going to establish.

B2B Account Management – Have We Lost This Ability?

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 10:08:00 GMT

In our concluding article in the ‘Sales Effectiveness’ series we discuss some important issues with regards to Business-to-Business account management and our ability to know our current client base.

One of the nasty surprises that many companies are facing with regards to the effects that the recession is having on business is the loss of existing customers. Unfortunate and entirely predictable you might assume, but in many cases it is the total lack of contact or the lack of effort put into maintaining a relationship that means the loss of business – which incidentally can be avoided. In a recession you might hear from many wise people that in a down economy your best source of income is from your existing customer base…. But how do you think they will feel if you turn up out of the blue asking to help them with their problems? – desperate?

Account management systems and CRM is an invaluable tool in managing communications, documents, past activity etc. but isn’t a replacement for the relationship itself. Without using the knowledge to help your clients achieve goals then ultimately you are just a resource to them rather than a source of inspiration and help. Relationships are about having a mutual understanding based on mutual benefits. When a customer thinks of you as a commodity seller then in all likelihood the relationship is one sided and the customer will not think twice about searching elsewhere for products and services. Account management is fast becoming a lost art that businesses are suddenly realising as their relationship stock dwindles…

Business relationships require dedication and time in maintaining and cliché as it is; you get what you put in. Too many companies are picking the fruit of low maintenance to their detriment.

Download our latest article Sales Success: How Many Times Has The Client Bought From You?

CRM and B2B Companies – How Are Companies Building Their Foundations?

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 16:24:00 GMT

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is, in my opinion, an often misunderstood theory which has led it in some quarters to be considered with scepticism by those who use it.

In essence, too many B2B companies expect CRM systems to manage themselves and then complain that they don’t get any results. Well - Any system, whether it is a CRM system, Sales Performance system, Cape Canaveral Shuttle Launch system etc. doesn’t operate well without input from people who are fully knowledgeable about using the system. Are all the users of a system fully trained in how the system works and what they will get from it?

Does the company know exactly what CRM offers to its users? I’m not sure many do. In most cases CRM offers companies one of the greatest building blocks to their company success – efficiency. Liken CRM as a way of organising and improving access to information – which isn’t by any stretch of the imagination a light or insignificant asset to a company. Think back to a world when computers were not used in business and endless pieces of paper, letters, documents etc. were sent and received. A company’s capability to do business primarily focused on a way of sorting and cataloguing that information so that members of the company could easily access it. Think then of the chaos and ability to work effectively if there was no system - I often picture a 19th century office, perhaps portrayed in a novel by Dickens, where literally mountains of paper reside in every room and a spindly clerk spends most of his day trying to access the right documents for his over demanding employers.

Of course, a lot of CRM systems these days offer more than just the sorting of information but there lies the problem. CRM is excellent at organisation but many companies expect them do to more than that with scant regard in how they are keeping the masses of data in easy reach to their users. Are we just slightly taking CRM for granted?

Making the most of Business to Business (B2B) Marketing Data

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 12:00:00 GMT

Following on from my discussion of social media tools like Twitter for B2B companies the most logical follow up post would be how to fully take advantage of Business to Business marketing effectively.

Firstly, marketing in whatever business cannot be viewed in isolation. Marketing, sales, operations, customer service etc. are not separate micro-industries within an organisation. Data from marketing efforts doesn’t vanish when a campaign produces a lead and another department takes over. In fact the transfer of data from marketing efforts through a sales cycle right through to fulfilment is more important at its natural closure which invariably happens outside the marketing department. Therefore the ability to track marketing data requires a close and fluid relationship between departments so that data isn’t lost and departments can easily see where leads and opportunities have originated and transferred.

Saying that, for data to be tracked the data has to be there…which requires someone to input it. With the boundaries of traditional and non-traditional marketing becoming less defined the origination of leads and opportunities doesn’t necessarily originate in one place. Take for example social media – potentially any member of an organisation can be a source of referral or interest and as such leads can be generated from absolutely any place in the company. Having the flexibility to be able to track where it originates is important in seeing where your business is coming from.

And that is what effectiveness in B2B marketing is all about. Seeing where your leads are coming from and tracking them through the stages of the sales process. If you can do that you can clearly see where your successful sales are originating from. Some companies can do this with generic marketing campaigns but most don’t have the flexibility to see where all their leads are truly coming from.

Ask yourself this question. If you knew that a lucrative sale originally developed from one of your IT staff’s facebook account, wouldn’t you encourage not only the whole department but others to adopt the same online activities?

Using Twitter for B2B Relationship Development

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 09:57:00 GMT

It seems that Twitter has over the past few months been adopted by the main stream as a networking system that everyone can use. Indeed, through celebrity and mainstream media adoption Twitter has seen a massive uptake in usage from a wide range of different types of users. But how is it being used in the ‘Business to Business’ world?

Twitter (And social media in general) in theory should be a B2B company’s dream tool in connecting with potential clients, business partners and other like minded professionals. The simplicity in finding other individuals who are interested in specific topics cannot be overstated… and yet I feel that companies who specialise in B2B aren’t fully committed to utilising these tools.

Why should a B2B company use Twitter? Well for a start, B2B is about finding and developing relationships. Sales in general may be about finding and solving issues that potential customers are facing but B2B is more complex in that those issues may be harder and longer to diagnose. How does one get access to all the information needed to diagnose issues in the B2B environment? By developing a relationship where information flows accessibly back and forth.

The scepticism from business users in a system that only lets you post 140 characters at a time is a difficult mental block to overcome – believe me, I used to have the same doubts. Yet, what Twitter offers is a freedom to converse that few other traditional networking activities can provide ie. a cost effective way of finding and talking to relevant people with less drain on time and resources. Yes, you aren’t going to debate the finer points of Plato’s ‘Ethics’ (though I have tried) but Twitter gives what we at SymVolli love…and that is the power to qualify.

In the same way that cold calling is now being revolutionised by the internet so that sales people are more informed, Twitter gives you the power to connect with people at a rudimentary level so that you can find, connect and talk to people who are interested in the issues that you are looking to solve.

SymVolli on Twitter

To follow me on twitter – http://twitter.com/neshthompson
Follow Luke Petri – Development manager http://twitter.com/lukepetri

SymVolli official Twitter account – http://twitter.com/symvolli

Differentiating Sales People From Order Takers

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 08:59:00 GMT

In the article Sales Effort: Are You Selling…Or They Buying? that we released last week there was a term than I used that caused a little controversy. In it, I said that The job of the sales person is to bring in sales and ensure that he has satisfied customers by maintaining an ongoing business relationship. His role is to help the customer to buy products or services and not just sit back and wait for them to order. Otherwise you have a very expensive order taker.

In my experience, and I have now been in business through three recessions, in times of booming economy the job of the sales person is that much easier. Those in business in the 80’s would often say that you could walk out of the office and catch an order in each hand while four were falling from the sky. Any sales manager loves this kind of situation but what in measuring performance one has to ask how much of this activity was down to customer needs and buying power rather than the sales persons actual selling ability.

In recession, the ability of the sales person is really tested because they have to really use their skills in human interaction to move buyers through the buying process. Sales is all about a two way process of interaction and sales people that only concentrate on their own activity without fully understanding their customers is going to find things a little more difficult.

In my latest podcast you can listen to how I explain the differences between sales people and order takers with relation to the article that we wrote last week. Either you can listen to it here or visit the Sales Performance Podcast to listen and see the other podcasts we have done.

Sales Effort: Are You Selling… Or They Buying?

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 15:24:00 GMT

Now is the winter of our discontent, made glorious by our ability to sell our products… that is what Shakespeare might have written if he was in marketing. Without dwelling too much on the ‘winter of discontent’ that the world is facing the unalienable truth that many sales people are facing is that they aren’t bringing in sales as fast as they did a few years ago. Why is that? Can we blame the economy? Is it because customers have less to spend? Why of course… but then customers still need products. The demand hasn’t gone. Action has been deferred. So, we can’t blame the economy totally on why sales people aren’t selling as they did.

In the second of our ‘Sales Effectiveness’ series (Read about the first article about Sales Qualification), our latest article ‘Sales Effort: Are you Selling...Or They Buying?’ is a discussion on what sales people can concentrate on to improve their sales skills to improve their success rates. As we have always said, a down economy is one of the surest methods of highlighting inefficiency in company practices and when we had a good economy we were satisfied that orders were coming in and we congratulated ourselves on how good we were at selling. However, the question is, how much of that sales effort was down to the customer buying and how much was attributed to the skills of the sales person helping the customer to buy. Now with fewer resources, customers aren’t flocking to buy so we have to rely on the skills of the sales person to get the customer to buy. Now really isn’t the time to realise that for the past few years one of most expensive resources in any company was a glorified order taker.

At SymVolli we aren’t in the business of sales training – we know plenty of brilliant sales trainers and coaches but our business is sales improvement by developing systems to measure gauge and point sales people and managers in the direction they wish to be going. The purpose of this article is to highlight areas of the sales process that sales people can improve upon in conjunction with systems like our own to increase conversion rates, revenue and margins, and meet if not surpass targets. We hope that you will enjoy the article and look forward to any comments you have.

Download the article Sales Effort: Are You Selling...Or They Buying

Sales Bloggers Union Free Ebook – How To Sell More By Reducing Risk

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 12:55:00 GMT

If you aren’t already aware, I contribute to a group called the Sales Bloggers Union who are a collection of sales professionals around the world who collaborate to discuss and promote sales strategies, discussions and issues in sales. What I like about this group is that we are from different disciplines and locations which mean that we have different perspectives on what sales people and managers face in day-to-day business. Every two weeks we have one sales subject that we all participate and post on.

And now the SBU has released its first e-book entitled How to Sell More By Reducing Risk. Each member has taken this topic and added a detailed article with their own particular slant on how to manage risk in sales.

My own article in the e- book; “6 Ways to Deliver Trust in Computer Aided Sales Systems” was written based on my experiences here as a SymVolli developer and the problems and risks inherent in effectively using sales systems in the work place. One of the major concerns with implementing and using a system whether it be CRM, SFA or SPM, is how to effectively engage sales people to use the system to make them more successful. In the article I talk about micro-management, joint ventures between managers and sales people, generating expectations, individual performance improvement etc.

The other members of the SBU have each contributed their own article to this packed volume of sales literature. The SBU members are:

Brad Trnavsky, Founder of Sales Management 2.0
Colin Wilson, Managing Director of First Border
Ian Brodie, Founder of Lighthouse Business Consulting
Karl Goldfield, The Startup Sales Mentor
Nesh Thompson, Sales System Developer at Symvolli
Skip Anderson, Founder of Selling to Consumers Sales Training
Tibor Shanto, Principal at Renbor Sales Solutions, Inc.
Tim Rohrer, The Sales and Marketing Loudmouth
Will Fultz, Top Sales Blog

I definitely recommend giving the SBU a visit and downloading the ebook and reading some great sales articles.

SymVolli Qualification Game – What Is the Probability of Success For This Sale?

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 09:43:00 GMT

The past few weeks have been a real focus on sales qualification with the last two sales performance podcasts focusing on discussing how qualification fits into company and individual sales processes as well as the article we released last week on spending time on sales opportunities.

It was with this in mind that I started developing a business game around sales qualification that tested subjective responses to qualifying a sales situation. Discussions I have had with George Petri our MD have often fallen on current practices of qualifying sales progress by directly interrogating the sales person in a sales meeting. It occurred to me that this not only is a loaded question resulting in a pressure answer but is heavily subjective according to the sales person.

The game that I have developed is designed to be a quick five minute question to sales people and managers to decide the probability of a particular scenario. This game will be part of a research paper so it is geared towards professionals in the sales industry. Please feel free to participate and play. The conclusions of this game I will publish at a later date.

Happy game play

Why Do Sales People Follow Every Lead They Are Given?

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 12:02:00 GMT

Last week we released an article on sales qualification and how important it is, not only in categorising and filtering sales leads but in asking defining questions throughout the sales process so that measurements can be taken about where each opportunity is in relation to key objectives.

In conjunction with the theme of sales qualification the latest Podcast article talks about how many sales individuals follow every lead given to them and how that lead automatically becomes a part of the forecast and pipeline. Sales individuals are under pressure. Especially in a climate of recession, the pressure to perform to target means that there is a burden on the sales person to show that they have a pipeline and a forecast. The logical result from this is that sales leads, whether they have a probability of becoming a strong opportunity or not, become part of the forecast and pipeline.

To listen to my latest audio discussion on sales qualification either play the Podcast here or visit our sales performance Podcast here.

Sales Qualification as a Means to Success

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 09:31:00 GMT

Sales Qualification begins with the qualification of the lead. Lead qualification is so important because it helps sales people concentrate on the leads that are most likely to come to fruition. It doesn’t stop there. Sales qualification as we practice is the continual processing of new information to define where we are in the sales cycle, what are the next steps that should be carried out, and indentifying any issues that might arise to slow down the sale. Sadly, many companies don’t practice lead qualification very well at all. Fewer still practice qualifying sales throughout their sales cycle. Why?

Sales people have a quota to fulfil and when things are not as they should be it is very hard to stay objective and to qualify whether a lead is worth pursuing. Every lead is chased just in case it yields business. No sooner does a lead appear then it disappears so the pressure is on to replace the one that got away to maintain the size of the pipeline. Sales managers have this problem times ten and also they are tasked with ensuring that sales targets are met. The pressure is focussed on the closing of business. Unfortunately, as is often the case more energy doesn’t necessarily mean more return. More leads don’t mean more sales and the greatest injustice of all – there simply isn’t enough time in the day. One can only work so long and therefore no matter how many leads you get, you will only be able to focus on a percentage of work at one time.

You can’t add more hours in the day but you can achieve more by qualifying which work to go after so that you can increase your returns. In the first article of the New Year, I have written an in depth article looking at how sales qualification can be adopted to make sales people and managers more efficient and more effective. In conjunction with this article the first SymVolli Podcast is now available discussing sales qualification. For those who wish to listen to this in the car you can download the mp3 at the Podcast page or just listen to the audio here.

Sales Performance Management Will Be the Definition of Success in the Recession

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 11:08:00 GMT

In many market sectors the “numbers game” has been the defining factor in judging how successful a business is. Even recently if you listen to the news about companies that are going into administration more often than not their bad performance is summarised on like-for-like sales. “XYZ Ltd. Sales are down 13% on last year”. Yet, rarely is this THE reason why companies fail. Whether you look at the failings of the banking sector or at the nostalgic closure of Woolworths the ultimate reason why these companies fail is the price at which business has been obtained.

I read an interesting article yesterday on the Intersection Consulting Marketing Blog on lessons small businesses can learn from General Motors (if you have time it’s definitely worth a read) which highlights some of the major flaws that large corporate companies have made. The lesson I learned from this post was that losing focus on the big picture is a common fault in many of the failures we see. Loss of sales is usually a symptom of poor sales performance management but ironically also becomes the reason why companies lose focus.

If a company’s sales are down a common reaction is to do something to increase sales instead of asking that important question – WHY are the sales down? Sales Performance Management is all about understanding the sales process, maintaining focus on the correct objectives and being efficient and effective in offering products and services to customers. The culture of sales performance management means that the numbers game (though important) is contextually looked at from an overview of the whole sales process instead of being the centre of orbit.

In the past, companies have thrown money at problems in order to remedy them. This simply isn’t possible now and some companies will voluntarily (and be forced to) look at how their entire sales process operates. The successful ones will be the ones who don’t get distracted and learn the lessons that are there to be learned.

Does Your Business Have a Medieval Siege Mentality?

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 10:34:00 GMT

Happy new year everyone. I mean it. I know, there is much not to be happy about at the moment. Watching the news for any apparent period of time should come with a government health warning, five minutes of BBC News 24 will in all likelihood send you into a deep depression at the state of this world and the Soothsayers that frequent our media seem to predict the worst times ahead. Yes, I understand the gravity of the situation but forgive me if I decline to join this collective doom mongering. Most of the evidence I have seen over the past year or so suggests that part of the reason why things are bad is the self fulfilment of failure that panic and fear induces. I will not be a part of this and I for one think that many businesses will actually do well with the correct attitude and the fortitude to meet oncoming events head on.

In medieval warfare an enemy general’s principal ally in laying siege to a town was the morale of the inhabitants of the city besieged. Weeks before the army arrived heralds would have cried of the impending enemy advance exaggerating (in some cases) the brutality of the enemy and how they treated their vanquished opponents. In some cases, the town will have already have fell before the army arrived. Why? Because the seeds of fear had swelled to such proportions that the majority of the populace had panicked and capitulated.

In some cases, this exact mentality is what we are facing in business today as we bolster our defences, baton down the hatches, stack up tins of spam and head of down to the cellar in panic. The approaching recession is being heralded as the destroyer of business large and small and the gut instinct is to consolidate and wait this dread time out and hope that the defences will hold. Some may do so, but they will be depleted and severely weakened. Some will not. Siege mentality is the state of mind of the cut off and surrounded. It is defensive and insular.

Positive mental attitude is perhaps overused but is a psychological edge that definitely works. Yes, there are bad times ahead but there are greater opportunities. Things may be more difficult but this means that achieving goals is more rewarding. The undisputable fact is that some businesses will be incredibly successful over the coming years and I’ll wager that in most of those success stories their attitude was one proactive engagement rather than defensive.

I for one am looking forward to the new year and the challenges ahead. I do wish you all a happy new year and believe that you will if you want it.

Long Hours, Busy Schedules, Client Projects… Is That Any Excuse?

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 14:40:00 GMT

Ok, first of all, apologies for the lack of content on the blog the past few weeks. In previous years the Christmas period has been a time of pre-hibernation activity as businesses prepare to close over the holiday period, contact between companies and clients have been one of mutual wind down as everyone accepts that if anything is going to be achieved then it would be best to start processes fresh in the new year rather than risk any progress being forgotten by the festive holiday. In contrast, this year has seen near maximum energy focused on work activity for all of us and looks to continue right up to the moment we close on Christmas eve. Yet, being busy shouldn’t be an excuse for not keeping up a valuable channel of information if one takes on the responsibility of a corporate blog.

To bring you up to date with all of my activities here at SymVolli and elsewhere the majority of my time has been in fulfilling client work over this Christmas period in anticipation for next year as well as the development of the SymVolli site (which you might have noticed has changed a little over the past week). I hope to announce the introduction of two new B2B sites from experienced professionals and associates of SymVolli. Our success with the sales bailout series of articles was and continues to be well read and we are currently planning a new set of articles early next year to capitalise on this momentum. Externally to this, I have been contributing to publishing of sales articles on the new Sales Bloggers Union site which continues to gain momentum as a resource for sales focused individuals.

This of course leaves development and implementation of SymVolli itself which has seen some major developments with clients over the past few months and continues to provide excitement within the development and sales department. In the New Year, I hope to be announcing the release of the new SymVolli Podcast hosted by George Petri, which will be a series of discussions on sales performance management, sales processes and other sales related subjects that we incorporate within SymVolli.

Next year promises to be a busy one. Until then I wish you all a festive holiday and a prosperous new year.

A Grimm Sales Story - Deja Vu Anyone?

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 10:40:00 GMT

This story was written when I first started the company in the mid 90’s by our PR consultant, John Lardge to mirror what was happening in the market. I kid you not, nothing has changed since it was written. The analogy still fits don't you think?

Once upon a time, an American company and a Japanese company decided to have a competitive boat race on the Detroit River.

Both teams practiced long and hard to reach their peak performance. On the big day they were as ready as they could be.

The Japanese team won by a mile.

Afterwards, the American team became discouraged by the loss and their morale sagged. Corporate Management decided that the reason for the crushing defeat had to be found. A Continuous Measurable Improvement Team was set up to investigate the problem and to recommend appropriate corrective action.

Their conclusion: The problem was that the Japanese team had eight people rowing and one person steering, whereas the American team had one person rowing and eight people steering.

The American Corporate Steering Committee immediately hired a consulting firm to do a study on the management structure.

After some time and billions of dollars, the consulting firm concluded that toomany people were steering, and not enough rowing. To prevent losing to the Japanese again next year, the management structure was changed into Four steering Managers, three Area Steering Managers and one Staff Steering Manager and a new performance system was implemented for the person rowing the boat to give more incentive to work harder and become a six sigma performer.

we must give him empowerment and enrichment.

The next year the Japanese team won by two miles.

The American Corporation laid off the rower for poor performance, reduced their paddle inventory, cancelled all capital investment for new equipment, halted development of a new boat, awarded high performance awards to the consulting firm, and distributed the money saved as bonuses to the Senior Executive.

With the aid of Federal legislation requiring the Japanese to drill holes in their boats, the US Corporation is now optimistic about their new team comprised of eight lawyers in a four man canoe sharing two paddles.

Are Some Managers Feudal Overlords?

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 10:18:00 GMT

“With great power comes great responsibility” is a quote from a movie that in the context of business is more than apt. On reading Paul McCords blog article entitled “Management Spy or Sales Aid – What is your Client Management System Designed to Do?” I quickly resigned myself to reading an all too often familiar story in how sales systems are deployed in companies as a tool to manage rather than improve.

There is one very inescapable fact that all businesses should quickly come to terms with and that is there is no system, including our own sales performance software, whose benefits to the company can’t be undone by the attitude in which the overall management of the company use it.

When a company uses a CRM system or Sales Performance System to micromanage their sales force it reflects a real flaw in the whole business process because the structure of the business is similar to a feudal system where management dictates the law and the sales force follow it. This reflects in the attitudes the sales force have in using the system as well as the attitude they have of their managers. If you read Paul’s article (and I strongly recommend that you do) one of the realities of this situation is that management don’t really have any idea of what the sales force think – there is a clear management/sales force divide.

One of the ways in which this can be avoided is in greater integration and involvement as a team unit. The goals of the company and the individual aren’t that dissimilar, everyone wants to improve and become better – so approach the forthcoming challenges together with this in mind. Simply introducing a sales system to the sales force and dictating that they use it will not garner respect or adoption to the system. However, communication through the buying process of the system and a genuine adoption of counsel from the sales force in what to look for, will aid in adoption because they are a part of the process and feel some ownership.

Is sales a mirror of our society's behaviour?

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 09:14:00 GMT

I am sure I am not the only one getting telephone calls offering pensions, hospitality packages, electricity, gas, and telecoms that the recent feel guilty if not stupid for not taking up the offer - pure confrontation. Now look at the news, most of it is about confrontation, one country against another, one community against another, one gang against another.

So is it the sales profession that is questionable or attitudes within society? We are continually being told or telling others that we have got to build relationships with the customer. I don't know of many confrontational relationships that have flourished.

People buy from people, even if it is a numbers game. So the next time a telesales rep calls me at home, work, or on my mobile all I ask is that you give me a modicom of respect as a human being and stop treating me as a telephone number on your list that you have to dial.

History is made… Now let us look to the future

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 10:33:00 GMT

Today is a historic moment as the world starts to comprehend the momentous decision that the American public have made in their presidential election. This blog has been purposefully devoid of politics for a number of reasons, ultimately because politics can be such an emotional subject that can potentially distract and affect discussions on any number of subjects. However in such a point in time it is very difficult to somehow divorce the euphoric feelings of such an event from what is happening in our lives even though here; we are thousands of miles away from what is happening.

Whatever your political affiliation what can’t be dismissed is that with this election the world’s collective holding of breath can now be let out and we can all look to the future, hopefully with a little optimism. What does this mean for business leaders, executives and sales individuals here in the UK? Directly, very little but I think that in a time where good news has been sorely lacking the positive affirmations of electing Barack Obama have great potential in inspiring us to achieve greater things even in harder times.

Who would have thought even five years ago that the US would elect an African-American president? The fact that this has actually come to pass surely illustrates the greatest lesson that we all can learn from and that is ‘anything is possible’.

Making the Number: How to Use Sales Benchmarking to Drive Performance

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 09:46:00 GMT

As an introduction to Sales Benchmarking I found this an intriguing read that kept me captivated as if I was reading a novel and wanted to know the outcome. It did not let me down as the outcome was sales success stories of orgainsations that have implemented sales benchmarking.

The book shows sales is not a black art and a mystery understood by very few who have the gift. It concentrates on showing how sales performance can be measured based on metrics developed for each part of the sales process, whether it is lead management, pipeline management, etc.

The best aspect of this is that sales experience is not sacrificed for pure analysis and that sales success needs process, experience, and benchmarking. Every effort is made to show how it can be achieved without hiding the fact that implementing benchmarking will take effort and commitment.

I believe for sales benchmarking to be established as a de facto tool for all sales, it must be accessible to all organisations irrespective of size. Therefore, my only question about the book is that it seems to be directed at large organisations. It would have been excellent if it also incorporated how small to medium businesses could implement benchmarking. Maybe this is the next book.

For more information visit the site for 'Making the Number: how to Use Sales Benchmarking to Drive Performance'

Giving Telesales a Bad Name

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 12:03:00 GMT

This morning at 8:30am I was called by someone, lets call him Matthew. He was calling on behalf of a very reputable, if not infamous, British telecoms company and asking if he could confirm our telephone number. I said that wasn’t a problem so he proceeded to read out our telephone number. At this point I wish to reflect on what had been, so far a short telephone call, but had already set alarm bells ringing:

If he truly wanted to check that our telephone number was correct, me answering the phone should have been enough for him

Having confirmed the telephone he has was correct, he then proceeded to ask me details regarding our mobile, insisting it was only a survey.

Alarm bell number 2: if he was calling to confirm our telephone number why all of a sudden was he interested in our mobile phone contract which is completely unconnected and resides with a completely different provider?

If I wasn’t already cynical, I was definitely on the defensive now. Being that it was early in the morning and I had already been in work for an hour and was looking for any excuse, I allowed him to press ahead. Giving him no details and answering politely “sorry it is company policy not to give out those kinds of details over the phone” he quickly got to the point. The survey quickly became a sales call as he wished to sell me a contract phone that would “at minimum match up to our existing contract”. Once again I politely and courteously said to him that I wasn’t interested and we parted ways.

Once upon a time in a land far far away telesales was something practised and marvelled at; today the skill has been watered down and farmed out, given to people that may never have come into contact with the product they are selling and are armed with nothing more than the corporate website, which can be easily accessed by anyone. What were prospective customers are now hardened cynics. As a matter of course, as soon as the person Matthew is calling, realises that there is the potential to be a sales call, the answer is “thank you but no thank you”. The art and the skill of the operator needs to be reintroduced into the operation or else telesales may become a redundant method of marketing, let alone sales. With the increased accessibility of the internet people are able to able to search for what they want from the comfort of wherever they find themselves.

Furthermore, couple the attitude of operator, Matthew, with the attitude of the telephone, Me and then throw the internet into the mix, it makes for an unsocial, insular, mistrusting society but that is a discussion for another time.

It's good to be efficient but it's great to be effective - CRM v SPM

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 08:53:00 GMT

Customers keep asking me to clarify what the difference between Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems and Sales Performance Management (SPM) systems is.

It is difficult to explain it without making it sound like a thesis being developed at one of the business management colleges. Apart from the obvious retort that you can be efficient using CRM systems, so you can have all your activity and communications records to do with your customers, prospects, and contacts in one place and can be effective using SPM systems by defining your targets, managing the quality of your pipeline, identifying key opportunities, shortening the sales cycle, etc. there still seems to be that quizzical look as to a certain degree of uncertainty.

You have people saying that they can achieve what is defined as SPM in a CRM system. Well maybe I can simplify the differences by looking at my experiences in using CRM and SPM systems. Using a CRM system I can see what business I have got from my customers, I can see how much business has been done so far and I can cut it and dice it by team or person or any other criteria. I can see WHAT I have done and WHEN. But to be able to change my processes or my strategy I need to know HOW I did it and WHY. The same applies to fallout, i.e. lost business. It is necessary to identify why it was lost and how we behaved so that we can alter our behaviour.

The focus of the SPM system is WHAT, WHEN, HOW, and WHY and this is achieved because a system such as SymVolli maintains all historic qualitative and qualitative information thereby allowing me to carry out any analysis on any part of my sales process. I am not only looking back on what I have achieved but also how and why, and now I can make important decisions as to what I should do to achieve future goals.

Telling The Truth – Telling It How You See It

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 10:23:00 GMT

This is a true story.

A girl goes into a fashion salon. I am told this is one of the most respectable establishments in the city with only the best and most highly qualified beauty technicians employed. The salon is French and so employs only French hair dressers. Again, I am told the demand for this particular business is very high, so I can only imagine the anticipation and delight that this girl will have had when entering the salon for her appointment.

As is customary, the hair dresser asks the girl what she wants done. She replies that she would like the latest ‘graded bob’ – which, I am reliably informed is the type of hair style that Victoria Beckham is famous for…

Anyway, the hair dresser pondered this, shook her head and then replied “Your face too fat. No bob”

Now, I’m all in favour of telling the truth as I see it in aiding the customer to make a decision but that appears a little undiplomatic. As was pointed out to me, there are cultural differences that have to be considered but one thing is certain, I would never be able (nor would I try) to get away with such a matter of fact statement of truth in this situation.

There are situations where I can see the benefit of being blunt but where part of your sales process involves ‘customer experience’ then some form of empathy in what your customers feelings must take place.

In your business, are you required to tell it like you see it? Do you have a duty to consider your customer's feelings?

Uh Oh – Reality TV and Selling – This can’t be good…..

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 16:40:00 GMT

They are pushy, they are ambitious and they think they can sell anything to anyone – whatever it takes, and whatever the cost.

I’m not the greatest fan of reality television but I’ll admit that my heart sank beyond its usual depths while reading this initial description of ITV’s new reality show ‘Natural Born Sellers’. I don’t doubt that this tele-visual sales microcosm can be beneficial for those who wish to learn more about sales, but I can’t help but feel that the overall experiment is going to be a horrific public relations nightmare for the industry as a whole. The credibility of sales people in general is tarnished with the ‘car salesman’ stereotype that provides such a strong blockade to creating trust in business relationships – won’t such a program just enforce this further?

Most will agree that the very idea of reality television is oxymoronic but instead a goldfish bowl of carefully chosen individuals designed to create the maximum friction possible in the pursuit of ‘great television’. The pressure put on to perform in front of camera does funny things to people and most of them are negative in such a genre of broadcasting. But then, isn’t sales all about pressure and ambition?

I will probably give the first few programs a trial to see whether my fears are at all founded, and who knows this may be a wonderful opportunity to learn… though I’ll reserve judgement on that right now.

Overhearing a Conversation about Sales Forecasting

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 14:02:00 GMT

A funny thing happened on the way to a football match

A rare midweek excursion ended up with me and the wife going out to eat in London before we went off to see a football match. Whilst sitting waiting for the main dish I could not help but overhear tones of discontent about a subject dear to my heart. At the next able were two men sitting drinking their vino and sampling the local dish and they were having a rather heated discussion.

‘I just don’t know how to satisfy my manager all he keeps going on about is how bad my sales forecast is. He doesn’t realise what state the economy is in and what effect it’s having on my opportunities.’ Said the first man.

‘So what has he suggested you should do?’ said the second man.

‘The same as he always does forecast more accurately’.

‘What are you going to do about it?’

‘Just keep doing what I am doing and hoping for a lucky break and also try and convince my boss as to what is really happening’.

Well, all I can say is that my wife was right; I didn’t hear a word she said. I was too interested in the conversation. It was screaming out for me to intervene and say go and ask your manager what he would do in such a situation, how would he get some accuracy into the forecasts? Has he ever presented how he judges the probability of a sales opportunity? Has he ever explained the company’s sales process?

It was time to leave but they were still discussing the state of the world. I will never know but will that sales person be another statistic to failure, which is ‘he hasn’t made his targets so get rid of him’, or will his sales manager coach him and help him improve his performance? We will never know.

Silver Bullet in Sales Webinar – A Chance to Learn From the Best

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 11:27:00 GMT

I have been fortunate enough to have spoken to Craig Elias many times and can personally attest to the creativity that Craig, as a sales professional and entrepreneur, brings to the sales industry as a whole. For those who don’t know him, Craig is the creator of Trigger Event Selling and for over 20 years has been the top sales performer at every company that he has worked for. His impressive resume includes coverage in some of the US top news and sales journals with one of the pinnacles of his career winning $1 million in a global “Billion Dollar” competition.

On the 17th September (not long now) Craig is hosting one of the largest webinars for business leaders, entrepreneurs and sales and marketing professionals. This webinar will deliver the proverbial “silver bullet” in sales to those who want to increase and maximise their business potential.

I strongly urge anyone who wishes to learn more and improve to go check out Craigs site to learn more on the Silver Bullet in Sales webinar or to register for the event here.

Pop quiz: When will a sales person be consulted in buying a system that they will use?

Tue, 09 Sep 2008 16:29:00 GMT

A company is going to implement a brand new CRM system into their work environment. The initial negotiations have been concluded and the value of the system has been recognised, the proof of concept has gone through without a hitch and even the finance director is on board. The IT department has analysed the specs and has concluded that the company’s present infrastructure is compatible and that it can accommodate the new system. At one point in this entire process will the sales person who actually will be using this system be consulted?

Is it:-

a) From the very beginning – The Company recognises that for maximum impact and increased probability of buy in, the sales force that is going to become more efficient and hopefully sell more from this venture should be consulted at every stage. They are consulted about what they would like to see and have a genuine input into influencing the buying decision of the company.

b) Towards the latter stages of the buying process – After senior management are satisfied with proofs of concepts and are sure that the system is going to provide them with what they require, the sales manager will present to the sales force a synopsis of the project and what is required. Dialogue at this stage of the process is intended to pave the way for greater buy in further down the process when the system is implemented.

c) At the end of the buying process – The sales force are notified momentarily before implementation of the system when the buying process has been concluded. The first time any sales person has direct contact with the system is the half day training session after which the sales force will be expected to be fluently capable of using and benefiting from the new system.

Discuss.

(Please give reasoning for your answers – you may use a protractor)

Sales 2.0 and Facilitating Sales Improvement Through Community

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 11:51:00 GMT

Michael Byrne’s blog post on Sales Management 2.0 highlighted an innovative way of implementing new technology and web 2.0 into the very culture of doing sales within the organisation itself. To summarise, Michael’s company facilitated a conference call system where sales representatives in a pharmaceutical company review their sales calls with a sales coach and the contents of the call are recorded on to a podcast on the company intranet for other sales reps to download and learn from. I not only find the concept interesting but also find the strategy of implementing this technology into the framework of the business itself an inspirational move. Not only can sales people learn from one another but it creates a community in what can be a very solitary business requiring a lot of travelling from one place to another.

If web 2.0 signifies the revolution of the way that internet users participate and use the web, then sales 2.0 surely should be a similar shift in using technology to increase business connectivity not only with new customers but with their very own sales force. Community and conversation is the way that expresses the way that technology has been used to define the changing ways of using the internet, but what can be said of sales? Is there that same shift in community in the sales industry; is there greater collaboration internally within the organisation? Are we reaching out to each other not only globally but internally as well?

Some would argue that technology in the internal infrastructure of companies is damaging for real communication between one person and another. Certainly, I have seen email change some working atmospheres where conversation is replaced by a hive of internal company emails (Read Matt Beaumonts “E: A Novel” for a hilarious fictional story centred around company internal email). Will using sales/web 2.0 techniques in the company benefit the way we do things at the moment? Perhaps there is great potential in both good and harm in integrating new ways of connecting as more communication facilitates more distraction. Michael’s solution to using podcasting certainly highlights that web 2.0 technology in the sales arena can be used in situations where communication is difficult and inaccessible but where distraction in the work place is limited.

Whatever the potential the general existence of community that 2.0 culture promises isn’t prevalent in companies at the moment. Yes, there are a lot of sales people using social media sites for lead generation and networking. There are a lot of people using online sales tools and SaaS systems for keeping up-to-date with their business information but the question I would like to answer is how many companies have adapted their organisation to fully utilise sales 2.0 by creating community within their organisation? The potential that 2.0 culture gives us is in creating closer knit groups of people who will work harder for one another and learn from one another.

Ps. Well worth a listen to is Michael Byrne's set of interview podcasts on core competencies on QBC.

Are You Too Stubborn To Admit You Don’t Know?

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 16:10:00 GMT

A friend of mine told me a story about her adventures travelling in India. Stranded in an unfamiliar city she needed to find a bus that took her to her intended destination. Not being able to read the language or speak the local lingo she found what appeared to be the bus stop and asked a passing local policeman when the next bus was.

“There is no bus” the policeman said, emphatically emphasising this cold hard fact with a wild gesture.

At this precise moment, a bus comes around the corner and stops at the bus stop. Without as much as an embarrassed expression the policeman turns around and calmly announces “here is the bus” and walks off.

Somehow, some people assume that not knowing the answer to a particular question reflects badly on them. I have encountered a few situations in sales where a person demonstrates their lack of knowledge by trying to gloss over, divert or even make up information in an attempt to appear knowledgeable. This is an incredibly stupid thing to do, because the assumption made by the sales person is that the prospect doesn’t know anything. Even if they don’t, there is almost an inevitable certainty that the prospect has access to a way of verifying the veracity of what is said.

Even The School Bully Has Potential

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 16:47:00 GMT

On reading Ian Brodie’s article last week concerning the need to develop relationships by finding common overlaps I was struck by something that Ian said. “Although it’s often said that you get 30 seconds to make a good impression - and that’s great advice for how we should present ourselves - we absolutely must not treat others in this way”. On reading this, I remembered a long forgotten childhood memory that highlights this very thing.

When I was growing up I was, shall we say…not the most physically imposing figure on the school playground. This inevitably led to my social standing in the pecking order of playground politics being quite low which consequently meant that I suffered my fair share of being pushed around. I take solace in the fact that Bill Gates probably had the same problem.

One such boy, (I can’t for the life of me remember his name) was a popular figure and someone who pushed others around. He was disruptive in class, often truant and would do anything to gain approval from his peers, which often meant humiliating teachers and less popular pupils. I disliked him…a lot, and for obvious reasons tried my best to stay off his radar.

Fate one day brought us together in detention (don’t ask me why I was there). We were the only ones in an empty classroom set to write endless amounts of lines…and we weren’t supervised. I was terrified. What torture was this bully going to mete out to me? My trepidation was unfounded as over the course of the detention we struck up a conversation. The exact contents of that conversation I forget but the reason I remember it was that I was shocked at the depth of character that this person had and the number of similarities we shared. We talked the entire detention time and what was more; we enjoyed talking to each other. This was a shock to the system. How could such a brute be so like me?

The lesson I learned at such an early age was that there was a lot more to people than the perceptions you have. Never has the proverb “never judge a book by its cover” been more apt. I had made a judgement of dislike (quite rightly, I think) based on a persons behaviour, but did that mean that we didn’t have any common ground – no. Only when you make a genuine effort to know someone can you make that real judgement on whether you have something in common.

Read Ian’s article entitled “Sales Tips from Angelina Jolie” for some extra insight into getting past stereotypes.

Lessons in Aggressive Sales Practices – An Italian Odyssey

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 12:54:00 GMT

I have been on holiday this past week in the epically historic city of Rome. Having managed to get a great deal of the sites covered from walking on the very roads of past emperors and visiting the famous Coliseum, I can’t help but admit that even though this was a time of relaxation and family time, I did note some extraordinary sales practices. One of the reasons for this was that I somehow had a very large sign following me around with the words “Gullible” on…. Or that is what it felt like. I somehow attracted every street hawker and salesman in a five mile radius, all intent on selling me ‘genuine’ merchandise from bits of glass to plaster replicas of the Vatican.

Now, I realise that as a tourist, I somehow fall into the easiest prospect to sell. Perhaps it is the language barrier or the unfamiliar environment… and yes, there were times I knew I had been had. That is all part and parcel of going on holiday. However, I was a little unprepared for the level of salesmanship that would be attempted in completing these little fracas of engagement. One such sales technique that was used I found so bemusing that I thought I would share.

This man sells roses (or rocks or anything really) to passing couples on the street. To be fair, this man is dedicated… I mean really dedicated. He approaches and holds out a rose to the lady, perhaps with a frown to her partner who may or may not be embarrassed enough to get out of this situation quickly by buying the rose. Usually, the couple walk on, but unperturbed the man follows, cajoling and persuading, perhaps hanging on to an arm. This process may take up to a minute depending on the character of the couple and let us not forget that due to language difficulties, he is using a mixture of short Italian phrases that can’t be understood and wild gestures in an attempt to persuade. As a last resort…and this is my favourite…he throws the rose at the couple and walks away a little. I don’t exactly know what he hopes to achieve here, perhaps he is insinuating that because they now possess the rose, he is being cheated out of money and that they will pay just to shut him up. Anyway, I never saw him succeed at this and the couple usually walk away, vastly more aggrieved than a few minutes earlier. The man picks up the rose with temporary indignity and a little disgruntled at the loss of this sale… all for about three seconds, to which he then spots the next couple and starts the process all over again with the same rigour as before.

This man was a sales black hole, as those who became savvy to spotting such people would skirt as wide around the salesman’s radar as possible. Rarely did I see such a person be regarded with anything other than annoyance. However, what I admired about this person was the dedication to getting the job done. He didn’t give up and wasn’t put off by the multitudes of rejections that he got…but I won’t be that generous. As aggressive sales go, I haven’t seen much worse and the amusement really is in the lengths gone in attempting to intimidate and embarrass his prospects in parting with money – usually unsuccessfully.

An Interview with Greg Alexander, Author of Topgrading For Sales

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 09:32:00 GMT

Recruitment is not my speciality, but then recruitment isn’t the speciality of any sales professional or sales manager. Isn’t it? I thought that HR was meant to be in charge of recruiting, but then who am I to say, I only help in selling products and services, why should I care? ……

Well perhaps you should. After reading “Topgrading for Sales”, one of the realities that I was faced with was the absolute calamity that recruiting the wrong people could mean for a business. To summarise the book, “Topgrading for Sales” is a manual for sales managers who wish to improve their sales figures by hiring the best people or “A players” to achieve them. Not perhaps an altogether new idea you may wonder, but what struck me upon reading this book was the inefficiency in most hiring processes today.

I could write more on what this book offers, but I felt that to get a better idea of where “Topgrading for Sales” works, I would have to go to the source. So, I asked a few questions of Greg Alexander, one of the authors of the book and CEO of Sales Benchmark Index.

Q. Your book centres on the costs of not hiring “A players” into an organisation with some astonishing figures on what companies lose by mis-hiring. Most people are talking about economic hard times to come, and I know that you mention your personal experience with regards to recruiting in recession times. I wonder if you have any specific advice to companies with regards to employing your system in the current economic scenario.

A. A recession provides a sales manager the opportunity to zig while others zag. Companies will look to control selling expenses and therefore cut back on compensation, rewards, and promotion opportunities for their top sales people. This is the time to proactively reach out to the best in your field and take their temperature. Position your company as being unique in that, regardless of the economy, A players are always welcomed and rewarded at your firm.

Q. The principle that you should hire the best person for the job may seem obvious to most. How do you convince someone that your book will change recruiting practices in their organisation? Why aren’t companies doing this in the first place?

A. There is an old saying in sales management “bad breath is better than no breath”. Sales managers are rewarded on the sum total of their team’s production. Therefore, if a territory is open, they want to fill it as quickly as possible and often compromise on the quality of the interview. A warm body in the seat is thought to be a better solution than waiting for the A player. As you can see in the book, this is not true. The cost of a mis-hire is very severe.

Q. With reference to overall Topgrading for Sales, you aren’t so much advocating a change in perception as more of a shift in sales management itself. Managers who are Topgrading are not so much focused on coaching or managing pipelines, but on dedicating resources to maintaining a current and prospective resource of “A players”, because by recruiting the right people the former activities are already taken care of. Is this the case? Do you see a change in the role of sales managers who use Topgrading?

A. According to Sales Benchmark Index’s database of over 12,000 companies, 52% of the sales expense budget is tied up in direct staffing costs. Therefore, hiring the right people has a disproportionate affect on Return on Sales, the ultimate measure of sales effectiveness. Topgrading for Sales was published to help sales managers be successful at the most important component of sales execution -- talent selection. There are other important sales processes (territory design, account planning, compensation design, quota setting, etc) in which sales managers need to strive for world class status. However, the low hanging fruit is in stacking the team with the best talent.

I thank Greg for taking the time to answer these questions and recommend you take a look at his book at www.topgradingforsales.com.

Sales Bloggers Unite For The Greater Good of Sales Everywhere

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 12:03:00 GMT

It may sound like a tagline from a movie…think Wall Street crossed with X-men, but a group of sales professionals have decided to unite together to form a super force of sales bloggers with the sole aim of improving sales for all.

You can imagine the possible voice for such a trailer – “Where business fears to tread, one such group of sales individuals grouped together to fight for justice, freedom and better sales everywhere”.

In all seriousness though, this isn’t such a flippant tagline, sales needs strong minded professionals to champion the role of sales people and sales managers within organisations. In a sometimes isolationist industry where competition, fear and bad sales practices are constantly hampering great talent and drive, a resource where clarity and collective wisdom is just the panacea that sales professionals really need.

There are plenty of talented individuals who are offering great help but no-where, I think, has there been an active collaboration between sales professionals in differing areas of business to come together to offer their help and expertise in a sales collective. Over the coming weeks, the name of this group and the website where the group will operate from will be announced, but what I can tell you is that the site will offer quality original posts from all the members as well as a regular e-book for download to sales professionals.

For a detailed look at the group participants visit each of their profiles here:

Brad Trnavsky - creator of the sales social network salesmanagement 2.0

Craig Elias - creator of Trigger Event Selling

Colin Wilson - Sales Pipeline Expert

Ian Brodie - Professional Business Services Advisor

Karl Goldfield - Sales Lead Generation and consultative sales training expert

Nesh Thompson - sales system developer

Skip Anderson - Sales Trainer and Selling To Consumer Expert

Jim Klein - Business Coach and Sales Trainer

Tim Rohrer - Media Sales Expert

Tibor Shanto - Sales Strategy and Revenue Attainment Expert

Watch this space for more details on further developments of this dynamic group of individuals.

Alltop.com - A Collection of the Greatest Sales Resources on the Web

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 10:38:00 GMT

I have been hearing good things about Alltop.com for sometime and some of the most experienced and well known professionals in all spheres of life are appearing in Alltop’s listings. Alltop’s premise, for those who don’t know, are in sourcing top quality sites and blogs and re-producing the latest headlines. In Alltop’s sales category you will see a collection of some of the most well known and valuable blogs, including Jill Konrath, Dave Stein, Paul McCord, Karl Goldfield, Tim Rohrer etc.

…and yes, we are there too. Woo hoo!

For an idea of what Alltop is doing in the sales community an interesting article to read by Doyle Slayton of SalesBlogcast.com, is recommended. He links to some interesting articles on how Alltop works and how it compares in the great ‘search’ jungle that is the web.

Walking Away From Over Demanding Customers

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 09:37:00 GMT

OK, you have a customer who wants to achieve something but wants to configure your product or service in such a way that severely restricts the possibility of achieving that goal. Previously I have discussed:

1. Shutting up and selling them what they want

2. Convincing them of the error of their ways

3. Offering balanced advice and support in the direction they want to go

And today we will discuss

4. Walking away from business

There are going to be situations where you encounter customers or potential customers who think they know everything. Some customers do know a lot and will proactively drive a project in the direction that they want – working with such people is no chore at all. However, there are a few clients who, not to put too finer point on it…don’t have a clue. They will ignore your advice, drive areas of the project in directions that clearly suggest their inexperience and generally make achieving the intended goal a virtual impossibility. They are the quintessential nightmare client, and everyone has them.

Not only is such a relationship very time consuming and draining on resources, but the chances are that the project you work on is going to be severely compromised. What if, based on this type of relationship you know that a project will knowingly result in business catastrophe? Do you want to be associated with that?

Some of the most difficult concepts a salesperson may face is actually walking away from business, but look at this way. If, by going down a certain course, you aid in the harm or impairment of a business, no matter what efforts you made in dissuading the customer from that course of action – you are still a party to a negative business operation.

By walking away, you say that your company has principles. By walking away from that business, a customer may be forced to think about their actions and again come to you because they value your dedication to achieving the right objectives. There are many professions that have this ethical ethos woven into their whole work strata. Doctors and Nurses are not allowed to aid in the self destruction of patients, lawyers are obliged to resign from representing clients they know to be guilty of an offence.

Aiding in destructive behavior is not a part of our social and moral fibre, so why make it a part of business? By walking away, you are drawing your line in the sand and setting up your ethical positioning. Sometimes your client may appreciate your standpoint and come back with a clearer understanding of your expertise and sometimes your customers will leave and find someone else. I’m willing to bet that the ones that you do lose won’t have been profitable to your business in long run anyway.

Here ends my discussion discussing the possible scenarios to the question of dealing with customers wants and needs. Possibly there are more or variations on what I have discussed and I would appreciate your thoughts on this.

Offering Support to Customers in What They Want

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 09:32:00 GMT

At the beginning of the week I started the response to the question of offering services based on customers wants in opposition to what they need. Having the expertise in your specialty means that you are in the best position to help your customers achieve their goals, but there will always be customers who have their own opinions on how to go about that – and sometimes they are wrong. So how do you deal with such a customer?

What has already been discussed is:

1. Shutting up and selling them what they want

2. Convincing them of the errors of their ways

Today we will talk about the middle road alternative to the previous two scenarios:

3. Balanced advice and support in the direction they want to take

There is a balance that can be attained by offering advice along the sales process and offering the customer what they want. As mentioned in my last post, constant advice contrary to the wishes of the customer can be adversarial to the point of obstructive and a client who feels like they are always criticized may often start resenting the business relationship. Nonetheless, letting your customer know options is not only good for them in that they are fully informed of different directions to take, but also good for you in that accountability for decisions remains firmly with the customer.

Offering support and advice not only means informing the customer about options but in making the customers ideas a more viable reality. If a customer definitely requires a specific course of action then all effort in making that course a success must be explored. Provided that you have shown all the alternatives, a dedicated approach to achieving the customers particular requirements will make for a better business relationship and can lead to a deeper and more stable partnership down the line.

Tomorrow: Walking away from business

Web site Vs Web system – I will have the latter at the cost of the former

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 09:20:00 GMT

They say never judge a book by its cover. Well, why is it that there is this continual debate that the development of an application running over the web costs too much? Is it because anything running in a web browser is compared to the cost of building a web site that has the minimum of back-end complexity? Is it because web designers are being asked to quote for an application and may not see the complexity of the system required behind the web interface? Is it that the buyer does not realise the complexity of the solution he is asking for?

I believe to overcome this problem the following has to be addressed. Is the buyer absolutely clear in what he wants, why he wants it, and what he expects to get from it? Has the supplier answered these questions showing the value to the buyers’ organisation in having such a solution? If not, then expect the buyer to focus on the price rather than the solution.

Are we asking for similar solutions to problems that in the past ran in different working environments? There were programs running in a DOS screen. Then there were programs running in a Windows environment. Now there are programs running through web browsers. You could draw similarities in the way great stories have been passed down through the millennia. First it was passed by word of mouth, then written on papyrus, scrolls, manuscript, paper, and now it can be found in digital format. The price of the digital media the story is written on? Not much. The value of the story that brings so much to millions? Priceless!

The moral of the story - It’s not only whether the cover of the book caught your attention, but was it a good read? If it did, then it was well worth the price that was paid.

Should Customers Be Convinced of the Best Course of Action?

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 09:28:00 GMT

Yesterday, I started a response to the question of whether to offer a customer what they want even if it contradicts what they want to achieve. The first theoretical approach I discussed was just shutting up and selling them what they want.

I think you might agree that watching someone make a mistake without saying anything is quite a large, not to mention unethical, business faux pas, especially if you are a part of that process. Which leads me to the next approach...

2. Convince them of the error of their ways

Is it not your duty to show your customer where their interests really lie. If they wish to achieve something and you know the way to achieve it then surely you should do all in your power to let your customer know this?

You are obviously a specialist in your field of expertise. What does the customer know about achieving their business objectives? You should convince them and make sure that they take the right course of action.

However, no one likes being preached to. Customers, especially in the B2B world, are the masters of their own destiny. You may be an expert in your field of business, but they are the experts in theirs. Therefore, clubbing them over the head and forcing them down an avenue that they aren’t prepared to go could be just as detrimental as the first approach that I discussed yesterday.

You may indeed be the best person to know what the best course of action is, but some customers aren’t willing to let you be that influential in the running of their business (at least not at the start of a business relationship).

As has already been stated many times before, a long term business relationship tops short term gains anytime. One of the ingredients to a business relationship is the ability to co-operate and work together. A harmonious relationship is desirable, but what is imperative is the need to be achieving the same goals. The danger with trying to steer a particular course with a customer, even if your notion is for the best, is that an adversarial relationship might develop. This is difficult not only for the customer but also for you, in that you are spending time and energy that could better be served elsewhere.

Tomorrow: 3. Balanced support and advice...

Should You Provide What The Customer Wants or What They Need?

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 16:53:00 GMT

This question was asked by Colin Wilson in response to an article I wrote last month about “Socrates and Sales Management” and at the time I mentally stored it away to deal with in a specific post. Of course, I didn’t think that I would leave it this long to address, but you know the saying “better late than never”…..which is an interesting topic in sales all of it's own (mental note: must write about this as well).

But I digress.

The question is whether you should provide services and products based on what a client wants or what they need? What if the client wants something in a particular way that is in complete contrast with the desired results that they require?

This is a moral dilemma, because as providers of products and services aimed at helping people in business, you obviously have the ability and experience to know how to achieve what the client requires. How then do you deal with clients who say “I want to achieve positive results, but I want it done by doing A, B and C” especially, when you know that A,B and C isn’t going to achieve those results and most probably hinder them? Here are some possible avenues to explore:

1. Just shut up and sell them what they want

For the sake of an easy life, why not just sell them what they want.

Because by providing a service or product in the knowledge that what the customer wants isn’t going to achieve the desired effect, is in the long run going to be detrimental to your business. Why? Because, you know that in reality, the blame isn’t going to rest with the person who required that particular configuration of product but with the provider of it – namely you.

If you believe in your abilities to improve peoples business lives, then surely one of the definite no-no’s is to comply with a customers request without some form of questioning? To some extent, sales people have a bad name, partly because of the willingness to sell absolutely anything to anyone without question. Short term sales closures are no match for a long term relationship built on mutual understandings. If customers down the line realise that they have bought something that doesn’t achieve what they want, they won’t appreciate the salesman who clearly knew what they were getting into and didn’t say anything about it.

Tomorrow: 2. Convince them of the error of their ways....

Long Term Goal Setting and How it is Really Done

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 15:38:00 GMT

My alarm clock is set extremely early, mainly because it takes such a very long time for me to drift from the depths of oblivious sleep to the optimistic heights of semi-comatose comprehension. At such times, the news headlines on the radio drift through my ability to comprehend much like ethereal wisps of dreams that exit my brain just as fast they enter it. Yet, every now and then, there will be a headline that manages to engage my consciousness with such a rude awakening that it kicks me out of bed with curiosity. This was what happened to me last week when the headline broke of a disabled beggar in India, who opened a bank account with 91kg of coins that she had saved for over 40 years since she was a child.

“What!” I said “Did my subconscious deceive me. Did I hear that right? Am I still dreaming?” After interrogating myself as to a) the source of the information and b) my sanity, I concluded that I was indeed awake and that this was a bona fide story not conjured from my preceding slumber. What then followed was the realisation of what a truly great story this was.

Having been to India, I have seen the poverty and squalor that so many of its people are forced to endure. Without any pension system there is no hope of retiring and being looked after in old age by the state and so when this little woman turns up at a bank with coins that took in excess of 3 days for the bank to count, her simple answer was “I knew one day I would grow old and have diseases, so I was prudent and saved for my pension”.

Can you comprehend this achievement? When many of us are panicking at economic uncertainty there is a woman who for 40 years (through many recessions) has managed to save money in one of the most uncertain of circumstances. I will have to bow my head in appreciation at the strength of character that person has in sticking to long term goals and resisting the urge at any point in the past decades to spend her hard gotten earnings. In any other circumstances this person would be a CEO of a bank or a fiscal policy maker in the government.

Above all, this story should give everyone the hope that achievement is possible whatever the circumstances as long as you have a goal and you stick to it.

Sales Performance Systems – all the information the spreadsheet will never tell you!

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 10:19:00 GMT

We are all aware of the importance of CRM systems and their value to businesses. But what about the important area of reliable sales qualification and forecasting which most existing sales contact packages do not comprehensively address? The need for reliable and up to date information on short, medium and long term sales potential is a major business opportunity for you.

Consider the problem of many companies, even some of the best in the world. They track their clients and key contacts more or less effectively. They are efficient at taking orders and they have finely tuned systems to help them control the manufacturing, supply and support processes. But there is a hole, for some it is a big black hole and one that potentially threatens their ability to plan and manage their businesses efficiently.

The hole is in the area of accurate and consistent sales forecasting. There is a gap between identifying of potential customers and individual orders or contracts and the realistic prediction and tracking of the likelihood of winning each individual piece of business.

Most companies however sophisticated their customer records and financial systems have no consistent system for predicting future business. They still rely on the highly subjective day to day, assessment of their sales people in predicting what orders are imminent, what is in the pipeline.

Those experienced in working with sales people will know that their confidence in getting an order can change from day to day and frequently diminishes the closer the customer gets to placing the order.

This means that there are actually millions of pounds of sales opportunities being reported at any one time, which fail to materialise but many are actually being taken into account by company planners.

Why is this? The major problem is the lack of discipline, consistency, accountability and, even, sophistication in the forecasting process.

Businesses need to map out their sales process so that all sales personnel can understand the objectives and strategies in achieving the objectives. This is one level higher than activity management. How people achieve their objectives can be different but the criteria in assessing whether we dealing with a good sales opportunities and the progress we are making within that opportunity remain the same. We need to know how big and qualified is the pipeline, which are the key opportunities that resources should be deployed, what issues could arise that could disturb the sale, and lastly how are we doing towards our sales objectives?

Businesses need systems that allow them to map, manage and refine their sales processes as and when necessary and not once a year when the business plan is being produced. We are in a global economy that is changing by the minute and we have to adapt to succeed. We need systems that will monitor the health and well being of a business 24 hours a day and let us take evasive action well ahead of impending crisis.

Evaluating the sales process

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 08:09:00 GMT

The sales process is a method. It can be one of the widely used selling methods, such as SPIN developed by Huthwaite, Target Account Selling (TAS), Consultative Selling and Miller Heiman’s approach, or it can be developed specifically for a company. Whichever method is used for the sales process, the method that is used will have an impact on the outcome, ie on sales. Hence, to select the best method, it is necessary to evaluate different methods. There are three main elements to such an evaluation: the method itself, the method user, ie the sales team and the client and the outcomes. Some methods may be more effective than others, depending on the customer need or segment. The sales process that is effective for new business development may not be the best one to use for account management. The method used in one market may not be effective in another market, due perhaps to cultural differences between the markets.

Evaluation is not only used when selecting the method to be used for the sales process; it is applied continuously, so that the three main elements can be subject to continuous improvement.

Customers often move from a naïve position, knowing very little, to becoming expert, as they buy and use the product or service. Evaluating the sales process, allows changes to be made as such customers needs change.

It is much easier to properly evaluate the sales process if the process has been blueprinted, as discussed in an earlier blog.

Overcoming Addiction In Bad Sales Practices

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 23:23:00 GMT

When I quit smoking three or so years ago, I employed a wide tactical array of support systems from nicotine inhalers to attending the NHS quitter’s sessions at my local health centre. I’ll admit that it was a strange experience, but the lesson I learned throughout those tortuous months while I weaned myself off that expensive and damaging habit was that I not only had to make a decision in improving my life but that I had to positively set out a plan and stick to it while using any and all support systems available. The point was that I had to want to do something, and then follow up with a plan to achieve it. I had wanted to quit for a very long time, but only when I made the conscious effort to change did I put the process into motion.

In Skip Andersons “sales training” blog article entitled “I am a Sales Trainer”, Skip sets out some of the tactics he uses to improve sales training in his clients. One of the interesting things that Skip mentions is his way of enforcing behavioural change by following up sales training with a proactive set of questions aimed at a salespersons ‘will to change’. As Skip says, it’s up to the individual to ‘see the process through and ensure that all the talk about change is not just talk”. I am willing to bet that there are many things about ourselves that we think could improve, whether it be in confidently approaching new prospects or closing deals, but a lot of us are addicted to the status quo and will not change even though we know we should.

Karl Goldfield, whose blog is also focused on sales training, writes in anothergreat article about the benefits of effectively connecting with potential clients, entitled “Messaging: Are they really listening, or looking to escape?”. Karl’s article opens the eyes to the simplicity of connecting with clients by focusing on four key areas – research, clarity, brevity and passion. You may indeed cry out at how easy it sounds to be successful but you will no doubt know deep down that a lot of sales people do their hardest to make even these things hard.

In a way, Karl highlights the common theme with what he and Skip says, in that sales may be unnecessarily convoluted because we have the tendency to make things harder for ourselves. We love using buzz words and terminology and saying five words instead of one, because we have been conditioned to do so. Sales trainers like Karl and Skip are there to make companies and individuals more successful, but in a way their hardest challenge is getting past the addiction that we have with keeping ourselves doing the same idiotic and useless things that are hampering our success. Who can change that? Only us.. with a little help from a great support system.

Information overload or data overload?

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 10:01:00 GMT

Information is structured data that can be used to make decisions.

What is the most dreaded task that management would rather they did not have to do? It’s management reporting, whether it is for management meetings or Board meetings.

Why? Because it takes so long to produce the reports that are required for each of the meetings, and then they have to face a stiff grilling as to the validity of the information within the reports. Why does the grilling come about? Because of the past experience when forecasts did not match reality - general inconsistency and inaccuracy.

Although we are continually being told that we have information at our fingertips it seems ironic that it takes us so long to produce relevant reports. The types of reports that management would require could be:

New Opportunities - Opportunities by product line, by sales person/team that have been entered in the month with a comparison with the previous month and the same period last year
Pipeline - Order, Revenue, Margin by product line, by sales person/team with a comparison with the previous month and the same period last year
Status - Won, Lost, Suspended, Abandoned by product line, by sales person/team with a comparison with the previous month and the same period last year
Performance – Comparison of targets set for individual users, product line, sales teams, territory against forecast and actuals with a comparison with the previous month and the same period last year

This is just a small sample of the reports that could be required and thisdoesn't evenincludeall thefinancial reports that would be needed.

So what is the problem? Well first we have to collect the DATA. You notice I use the word data. Then we have got to get it into a format that allows the management team to carry review it and identify trends and exceptions, and also see into the future what could be. No we have the structure what about the quality of the information? Well we could have the best looking reports that are produced with the minimum of effort but add no value to the management process because the INFORMATION - structured data - is unreliable. So, without a clear sales qualification process that assesses the validity of each of the sales opportunities throughout the sales cycle, the information could be suspect. At least with a sales qualification process that is defined and used, you can refine it when you identify exceptions that are not acceptable, thereby increasing the accuracy of the information held within each of the reports.

After all, the sales qualification process is the sales managers model that he or she uses when working with individuals within his or her team to assess each of the opportunities and decide on future activities.

Systems such as SymVolli, allow management teams to develop and implement their sales qualification process for it to be used by all the sales team in managing their opportunities. This will deliver qualified data, which in turn is used to produce reports for management to make decisions.

Basically, all reports should be the by-product of the sales qualification process. It’s time that the days of the sales meeting that was used to check the accuracy and validity of the sales forecast and also looking back on what happened, especially the ones that got away, are gone. It’s time to look forward and to plan what should happen to achieve the results you want in trying to improve your sales success through managing your sales process.

How to assess customer satisfaction with the sales process

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 11:05:00 GMT

A store in Boston, Massachusets has a sign: “A sale is not a sale, until the customer is completely satisfied”. Satisfaction can occur weeks or months after the purchase of the product or the use of the service. The same is true for dissatisfaction, so only testing for satisfaction at the time of purchase is only a partial or limited view of customer satisfaction.

Satisfaction should be tracked for the brand experience the customer receives throughout the buying cycle, ie from first awareness of the brand, through needs analysis, assessment of alternatives, selection of offer, acquisition of the offer, use, and service, support to reconsideration and repurchase.

The customer’s experience of the brand is not just about the product or service being bought or used. It is also about the nature of the transaction, from start to finish. Was the customer able to transact in the way he or she prefers, according to preferences for choice of channel, at each stage of the cycle. Can the customer roll back through the transaction, via a different channel?

To set levels for expectations, the service standards need to be communicated to the customer. For example, we try to answer the phone within three rings, or you should have to queue for no longer that two minutes, before being served.

The best way of assessing customer satisfaction is by continually listening to the customer. To listen continuously requires processes that capture customers’ views on satisfaction to be fully automated. Without full automation, it is unlikely that continuous listening can occur.

Offering Value to the Client

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 20:33:00 GMT

I’m certainly no expert in pre-history, though as a child I had an obsessive interest in dinosaurs and I certainly knew the difference between a Tarbosaurus and an Albertosaurus (Who doesn’t?), but it seems to me that sales as we know it, is essentially the same as when we first discovered it many millennia ago.

I quite like to think of the invention of sales as a momentous occasion in history, possibly accompanied by Strauss’s “Also Sprach Zarathustra'”, when man suddenly awoke from Paleolithic slumber and realized that one could exchange the latest design of mammoth skin jacket for an all inclusive flint knife set with stylish bone handles. The dawn of our civilization was based on the collective realization that if we all worked together we could provide more than anything we could achieve on our own. However, the essence of what dawned thousands of years ago hasn’t changed at all, and that is that trade is based on the exchange of value. One party requires something and in exchange for an item that the opposite party requires, completes a transaction. It’s all really simple, really.

Pre-historic is certainly a word I wouldn’t use for Tim Rohrer, author of the Sales and Marketing Loudmouth blog, whose excellent article on local marketing hits at the essence of offering value as part of the sales process. Though, this article focuses at knowing the consumer as part of selling a service – with the great analogy of the disastrous Coca Cola ‘morning’ initiative – I get the underlying theme of knowing your customer in order to offer greater value. The role of marketing is not to force or even change, but to enlighten and offer. Large and small businesses alike learn from the mistake of trying to create ‘need’ rather than fulfilling what is already out there.

In a completely different type of article, Jim Klein’s article “Solve the problems and assume the Sale” is very much centred around showing the value in your product pitch. Jim’s article is an in depthlook into how to convey that value, thereby negating the possibility of your customer objecting on price.

In contract law, one of the principles of transaction is having what is known as a ‘meeting of minds’, whereby both parties are fully knowledgeable about the details of the deal in question. In sales, a meeting of minds is also desirable in that you ideally want your customer to know exactly how beneficial the product is. Jim’s article is a great resource in understanding how to convey this value to your prospective clients and his ‘From the Heart Sales Training blog' is packed full of similarly useful material.

A Business is Like a Living Organism

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 12:09:00 GMT

I have often thought of the comparison between business and a living organism, for example, a business requires food (sales), to produce nourishment (cash), which enriches the blood (liquid assets), whose flow rate to the various organs (business functions), is determined by the brain (management), based on the INFORMATION available.

If a business is like a living organism having various organs that perform different functions, which are connected to each other and controlled by the brain via the central nervous system, then why do we use a single system (organ) to carry out all our front-desk activities? We need one brain - management, but do we need one system?

Surely what we need is the best system for each function and within the overall scheme of things, something that will trigger events or alarms based on what is happening? The events or alarms can be to inform a user or another system. This happens because data is flowing between systems based on what is happening. With data structures within systems being easily accessible, is there a need for heavy systems integration? The process should define what events or alarms are needed. For the front-office we need a sales process management system that will work with one or more systems, covering everything from marketing, through to sales, to fulfilment and beyond. The knock on effect of introducing such systems is not only do they communicate with each other but more importantly there is better communication between humans, whether they are colleagues, suppliers, partners or customers.

In our bodies, we have one brain that directs all our actions both consciously and unconsciously, but do we have one massive organ that deals with everything else? No, because each organ is specifically designed to carry out an essential activity and connecting itself in a set of processes that interact with other organs in our body. Do we emulate that in business? Not much, partly due to the avoidance of finding and tailoring systems to deliver the optimal business result. Many would much rather get one system that did everything to a mediocre level.

Ask yourself these questions. Where is the pain in my sales process? What can be done better? The chances are that if you have one system, then the chances of rapidly tailoring one part of your process to solve problems is going to be limited. In today’s world of cloud computing and information exchange, there is no need to limit your business to the frustrations of one solution.

Acquisition v Retention

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 10:50:00 GMT

For many vendors, it is usually much less expensive to retain existing customers that to acquire new customers. However, it may be that the potential to sell more products and services to existing customers is limited: sales to current customers may have reached saturation point, so the only opportunity, or the main opportunity may lie in acquiring new customers. Competitive strategy may also require the successful acquisition, to increase market share, lower costs of production or obtain other economies of scale or to limit competitors’ access to market segments.

The costs of acquisition can include:

Developing a segmentation for the targeting of new customers to acquire; the segmentation can involve the time needed to identify new customers, the probability of successful acquisition, tests of propensity of new customers to buy and as many other factors that can help improve targeting and acquisition.
The time needed to develop a new sales process, which can require new or further development of web sites, databases and other systems
The incremental costs of pre sales, sales, fulfillment, administration and support people, as sales to new customers may require more pre sales and sales time and support resources; also, people may require training for the successful acquisition of new customers
New marketing and sales literature and other collateral, such as
The integration of multiple channels in the sales process, such a mobile, web, call centre, retail outlets or branches and field selling
The development of new incentives and rewards to motivate the acquisition of new customers
New reports and dashboards, to track and report activity

The get the mix right, in terms of allocating resources to acquisition or retention, the true cost of acquisition needs to be know, and the life time value of newly acquired customers fully understood. The lifetime value is the number of years they remain a customer, the number of transactions during each year and the average value of each transaction.

The costs of retention can include:

Time and investment in understanding how existing customers’ needs are changing, and developing new products and services, or refreshing existing products and services, to meet these needs.
Costs incurred in determining the lifetime value of retained customers. This may involve segmenting existing customers by different lifetime values and the propensity and costs in retaining these customers.

The key to successful acquisition of new customers is in effective targeting, which in turn, depends on good segmentation. Effective targeting will reduce the cost of acquisition and hence improve the return on investment (RoI) in acquiring new customers.

Evasive Sales Manoeuvring

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 12:16:00 GMT

Motorcycles are dangerous. Trust me, I know, because I ride one (as does Nick), but what I have come to learn through experience is the safest way to enjoy what I love while minimising the chance of ending up as a statistic. When I ride a bike, I am trying to be aware of all possible situations that can arise both ahead and around me. In most situations I have an exit strategy in the event of anything out of the ordinary, for example, on a motorway I will position my bike behind a car so that if it brakes suddenly, I can evasively manoeuvre around it rather than into the back of it. In most cases, I think of the worst case scenario and plan an exit strategy based on what would happen, for example, in a multi car accident, I will ride into the grass verge.

So what has this got to do with business? Well, if we were to compare a businesses sales process to a journey there are many similarities. From a businesses point of view there is a starting point and a point of destination (Where does the business want to go?). The vehicle of the business with which it is to travel to its destination is anything that is in direct control of the company: this would include the company sales and marketing processes, the personnel, the management and the products. As with any journey, the point from start to finish is never a direct one, you may have to overtake slower traffic or take a diversion in response to traffic jams or road works. External factors play a heavy role in how easy a journey is, and that is no different in business.

With regards to a businesses sales process, external factors are as equally important as those that are driven by the company itself. Customers are external factors that have a crucial power over a businesses direction, but other external factors could include competitors, the economy, law, business partners, trading associations, the press, public opinion etc. This may be regarded as other traffic that can hamper or hasten your journey as a business.

On my journey, the probability that traffic will react in the right way means that I can travel in a certain manner but I cannot foresee what will happen because that involves other peoples decisions. I react to events like overtaking slower traffic but in most cases I have a plan of action if the worst happens. How many companies have evasive manoeuvres as part of their sales process? How many companies’ sales processes factor in all the external influences on their journey?

Much of what Craig Elias says about ‘Trigger Event Selling’ resonates with manoeuvring in that the same principle of changing direction can be applied to a business as it is to a vehicle and that you can not only manoeuvre according to external factors but can instigate direction changes in others by being that event that changes another’s course. In his article that discusses the “Window of Dissatisfaction”, I can relate to the sixth sense of ‘seeing’ based on experience. In a bike analogy, it would equate to the anticipation of events based on past experience. E.g. I knew he was pulling out of that junction, because the car started moving while he was looking in the opposite direction (it happens – a lot!). Craig’s article is well worth reading.

Similarly, Ian Brodie’s article about ‘won sales analysis’ is another great article that fits into the journey analogy. Companies make regular ‘loss reviews’, he states, in an attempt to understand why a sale has failed but he espouses the need to review success by understanding where sales succeed. In an accident, the authorities will pore over the evidence for insurance and legal proceedings in an attempt to understand why the accident happens, but we take for granted the reasons why a journey is successful. I am as guilty of this as anyone, but if I was to analyse my last journey, I would say that it was successful because I maintained a proper braking distance, didn’t take any risks and the riding conditions were favourable. Can I learn from this? Of course I can, but do businesses learn from their journey? Another great read from Ian's 'Sales Excellence Blog'.

Never mind the quality feel the width

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 09:14:00 GMT

It’s a phrase that not so reputable merchants of clothing, such as suits, used to say when trying to impress customers. They would then go and talk about how good the suit would be in cold weather because it would keep you warm. The problem was how long would the suit last? Would it make winter if it was bought in the spring?

Well, how good is the sales pipeline? Will it yield good results and be durable whatever the conditions that we are to come across?

There is only one way to know and that is to Qualify, Qualify, Qualify.

Qualify – In or Out? – Is this opportunity worth pursuing?
Qualify – Understand the criteria by which the customer makes a decision to proceed from one stage to another in the sales cycle and keep testing that progress is being made. This will also help in identifying potential issues allowing you to deal with them to shorten the sales cycle.
Qualify - that the pipeline has the appropriate amount of opportunities in each stage in relation to conversion rates that have been established by historic trends to ensure that targets are met if not surpassed.

The moral of the story is quality and quantity are intertwined via the qualification process. Next time you go to buy a suit check the quality. You know how to qualify don’t you! That the material is top notch, the tailor or manufacturer has a very good reputation, that wearing it makes you feel good. It isn't that difficult, is it?. So why can’t you do it for sales?

Adapting the sales process to different customers

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 10:12:00 GMT

Customers will not all have the same needs and the same buying process, hence the sales process needs to be adapted to meet the needs of the different customer types or segments.

It is helpful to have a blueprint of the sales process in order to make the changes needed for the different customer segments.

The more the differences are understood, the more effective the sales process can be. The differences may be in the decision making unit, in terms of those that influence the decision, the economic buyer, the user, the specifier and the evaluator; differences are also likely to occur in the level of knowledge or the problem or requirement and the possible solutions.

Attention also needs to be paid to the type of relationship favoured by the buyer. Some buyers are seeking value for time; they wish to minimize the time spent in the buying cycle, as they have other priorities. Others will wish to minimize expenditure and will spend a lot of time investigating alternatives and finding the best or lowest price.

Most good sales people intuitively recognize these differences in their customers and adapt their behaviour accordingly. However, the same sales people often find it very hard to explain what they do and how they do it, or are reluctant to pass on such knowledge. Dependency on the capabilities of specific sales people can be a risk, and hence it can be important to capture this knowledge when adapting the sales process to the needs of different customers.

Socrates and the Art of Sales Management

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 12:37:00 GMT

Socrates is famous for developing the ‘dialectic’ form of analysing truth known as ‘elenchus’ which basically involves exploring hypotheses through rational discourse and leading that hypothesis through its flaws and uncovering its contradictions. If philosophy can be defined as the search for truth and knowledge through cognitive reasoning and exploration, then the Socratic Method is the means of exploring truth by challenging assumption and presumption.

The “Euthyphro” is an ideal introduction to the Socratic Method of analysing truth as it is in parts quite amusing and easy enough to read. What is interesting is that Socrates, who is commonly attributes with the phrase “I am the wisest of men, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing”, doesn’t teach by preaching his own values but encourages the introspection of values held by those he is discoursing with through a journey of questions.

The reason for this post was in response to a great article by Tim Rohrer entitled “Dangerous Assumptions” within which he gives an example of dealing with a salesman’s assumption in calculating the budget for a proposal to a client. If you compare Tim’s conversation with that of a Socratic dialogue you will see a noticeable similarity. As Tim says to his salesman - “I'm not saying that you are wrong but I am trying to get you to see whether you are right” – which is the exact essence of Socrates ‘elenchus’.

An interesting question was raised in Brad Trnavsky’s Sales Management 2.0 this week in which a budding salesperson was asking for advice on setting up appointments. There was a lot of interesting and valuable advice given but what interested me, especially so closely after reading Tim’s article is how much questioning is a part of being successful. In sales we may call is “qualifying” but in reality we are also doing the same thing that Socrates did two and half thousand years ago. The power of questioning is not only a way to qualify what another person is thinking but is a way of directing conversation to focus on the important elements of a conversation.

Sales and Sales Management is a philosophy in that we are searching for the truth, in what our prospects want and in our own abilities to provide that. Constantly questioning should be a process where we continually identify, analyse and explore our own perceptions and assumptions as well as that of our clients.

The Forecast Report is a By-Product of the Sales Qualification Process

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 09:57:00 GMT

Some companies use regular sales meetings, (weekly, monthly, etc.) as the qualification process for the forecast report. Others rely on the outcome of each opportunity to decide on how good the forecast report WAS! And some use both meetings and outcomes.

That’s fine, but the problem seems to be that all the activities deal with the past. This is not to say that there are no discussions about current opportunities, but once again they seem to focus on issues that have arisen and could affect the sale. How about some forward planning? What mechanism can be used to make forward planning much easier?

How about capturing the sales process by which the sales manager uses to qualify each of the opportunities that his team is handling and making it available to the whole team in a very simple and effective manner? In this way each of the sales team will be continually qualifying their opportunities, thereby being able to anticipate the next steps required towards a successful outcome. This will help in shortening the sales cycle. They will even start qualifying opportunities as to whether they should be pursued.

So what does the sales manager do now? He can coach his team and build them into a more efficient and effective sales force. Oh yes, and when the forecast report is required it will be accurate and consistent because it is a natural by-product of the sales qualification process.

Blueprinting the sales process

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 09:04:00 GMT

A blueprint is a flowchart of all the steps in the sales process. Blueprinting, when applied to sales process, allows the planning of resources required at each step in the sales process to maximise conversion to the next stage and minimise the time needed to complete the sales cycle. The resources include the number of hours, needed by skill type, such a pre-sales engineer, sales, sales administration, fulfilment, legal and technical support, as well as the systems, budgets and supporting documentation needed at each stage of the sales process.

The blueprint includes the metrics for conversion rates between different stages of the sales cycle and the value added in each stage.

The benefits of blueprinting the sales process include:

Matching the sales process to the client’s buying process, which increases the probability of a successful sale.
Identifying the up-sell and cross sell opportunities.
Identifying ways to add value.
Getting the right people doing the right things, at the right time, with the right resources.

In developing the blueprint, it is important to plan for when something goes wrong and work out what will be done to recover from failures, and to ensure that the capability and capacity of the resources needed by sales are available to meet the revenue and transaction targets.

The blueprint can be used to identify the minimum time required to complete a sales cycle and to identify the “moments of truth”, or points of contact with all the people in the decision making group, which need to be managed to ensure the right brand experience.

Microsoft Visio is a good tool to use to capture and maintain the blueprint, as changes are often needed. It is also possible to use PowerPoint.

Lastly, the sales process blueprint allows the role of the various channels used in the sales process, such as web, mobile, call centre and sales force to be agreed and the handovers between the different channels to be engineered, to provide the best possible customer experience in the sales process.

Passion for Your Product Can Rival Any Competitors Market Stranglehold

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 14:09:00 GMT

It is funny, but I think most of us would like to be in the position that our company, brand or offering gets to the dizzying heights of the big conglomerate organisation. We love to hate the big monopolistic companies (I’ve touched on this in an earlier post entitled “How to become an evil corporate company”) but many of us would love to be in the position of the Bill Gates and Richard Bransons of this world. The irony here is that in doing so your company will rise to such a level that contact with individual customers becomes that more difficult.

After reading some great articles from Ian Brodie on “What makes a good salesperson?” and Skip Anderson’s article entitled “The Passion Meter” there is a common idea that belief in your products or services will result in success. Passion and a genuine belief in what you are selling are one of the essential ingredients to igniting that same belief in another person. For example, you tell your friend that you had a great time at a theme park and really enjoyed yourself. Is there a chance that your friend is going to take your recommendation and go himself? What if you told him it was OK, all right or nothing amazing? Will that attitude still inspire your friend to go?

Passionate people inspire others with their beliefs. In companies that have grown to gargantuan heights there are still people who are passionate about their products, otherwise they wouldn’t have grown as they did. Their problem is that most of those people who are passionate about their product are now in positions far removed from the end user. They are the C.E.O.’s, the directors and the senior managers. When you are being sold to from these companies you are dealing with someone way down the food chain and do they have the same zeal and passion as the CEO? I don’t think so.

So for SME’s who get down heartened by a competitor’s market power, think on this. You have a powerful advantage over larger companies in that you have the ability to transfer the passion and belief in your products where those bigger companies might not be able to.

How much! For training and consultancy?

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 11:09:00 GMT

How many times have you heard the phrase ‘how much for training or consultancy services? I wish Icould charge that!’?

I think it these trying times we are going to hear it more and more. In most cases that argument centres on how much the prospective client hires out his staff. Let’s take the example of an electrician or a plumber. Now they are in demand! People are willing to pay for their services and also for the material used so that they can get electricity or water supply.

Go back to the consultant or trainer; there is their labour cost and then the material - well, the knowledge that is imparted to the recipients to do their job. Is the problem that the material (which is the value added to the performance of an individual, team, or an organisation)is intangible and could take a lot to measure how the training has had an effect? Should trainers and consultants be thinking of being paid performance bonuses as in football? The more a sales person sells after the training or consultancy has been carried out, themore the consultancy company getrewarded accordingly.

But then, who is to say it was the training or the consultancy that caused the change?

Focusing on business objectives

Wed, 28 May 2008 08:37:00 GMT

At the battle of Naseby 1645 one of the most famous battles of the English civil war was fought pitting two of the prominent figures of both the royalists and the parliamentarians against each other. Prince Rupert commanded a superior cavalry while Oliver Cromwell commanded the disciplined force of the New Model Army.

Without getting into too much of a history lesson, the battle revolved amongst other things on the cavalry charge of the royalists. It is not exactly known why but on defeating their cavalry opponents, the royalists instead of seizing the initiative and attacking the main force instead left the field and attacked the enemy baggage train. Either through greed at obtaining spoils or just ill discipline, this action may have been one of the deciding factors in the outcome of the battle. Incidentally, the parliamentarians through Cromwell were able to seize the opportunity and defeat the Royalists comprehensively.

History is littered with ill disciplined cavalry charges where the initial gains are frittered away by loss of focus and personal rapaciousness. The same can be equally said of business strategies today. In any business, there are primary and secondary objectives and while we all like to achieve, the success of business comes down to focusing on the right objectives rather than achieving them all. In fact, like the cavalry charge, the focus of a business on objectives that aren’t relevant to the whole business strategy can be detrimental even if those objectives are achieved. Why? Because, maintaining a clear focus on your objective moves your business in the right direction. Any other objective no matter how positive it may be, unless it results in moving your business in that direction is a distraction.

I always say to my staff that in everything you do you should always ask the question “What have I done to make a sale today?” If in doing a business activity I am not contributing to achieving this, then that activity isn’t one of the businesses main objectives.

Business Cold War and the Detente Revolution

Wed, 14 May 2008 11:54:00 GMT

I have been off the radar for a few weeks with several projects, one of which has been the re-design of SymVolli.com the aim of which was to create a new web structure so that we can incorporate more solutions based material for our clients and readers.

Business may indeed be a cut-throat world where competition initiates cloak and dagger market positioning, counter espionage discounting to undervalue a competitors position in the market or just plain hostile competitor bad mouthing. Yes, business can be a dangerous place but with the internet things have changed somewhat. Now an openness of free expression and co-operation exists between businesses all over the world offering numerous accounts of qualitative experience to any who need it. Why has this pre-internet cold war been changed to this new Détente revolution?

The answer can in part be attributed by the frontier of information that has been lifted by the invention and exploitation of internet technology in passing knowledge to one another. Pre-internet you could go up to a particular vendor and he might enforce negative information about competitors that would be hard to back up through physical barriers and access to qualifying data. Now, if a vendor bad mouths a competitor they are in effect highlighting that vendor in the prospects mind. Qualifying information can be easily corroborated by customer reviews on blogs and forums and information on competitors can be obtained at the click of a button.

In response to this opening of frontiers businesses have responded (albeit slowly) to use of the internet in offering “free” and easy information to readers in a positive marketing strategy. Negative counter marketing still happens but what has been realised is that the balance of power has shifted to the buyer who now has a wealth of data to base decisions on. Businesses now are clamouring to offer more information and help online, in the not so altruistic intent of being recognised as knowledgeable in their field of expertise rather than the least negative vendor.

Here at SymVolli, we have a wealth of information and knowledge drawn from many years in business management and IT development and we aim to offer as much help, discussion, information and debate on business success because at the end of the day our business is about solving our client’s problems and yes we think we have a lot to offer.

I for one am happy that the internet is a place where much positive information can be shared and I hope that you will enjoy and profit from the information that we put on this site in the future.

SymVolli Launch Event Video

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 11:03:00 GMT

As promised the business partner launch event held at Penguins on the 22nd of Feb was filmed and the results of which are available in high resolution on symvolli.com or on YouTube on the SymVolli Channel.

Again I would like to thank Mark Buist of Penguins not only for hosting the business partner launch event but in being interviewed for this video as well. My thanks also go to all who participated in the event to make it so worthwhile.

An Introduction to the New Look SymVolli

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 13:20:00 GMT

Video on the web isn’t a new thing nor can it be said that it hasn’t been properly utilised by companies on the internet, but as internet connections get faster and faster and methods of downloading and consuming video gets easier, online video is becoming one of the most popular methods of direct communication on the internet.

A while ago I announced that the business partner launch event was being filmed and without trying to sound too Hollywood, the film is in post production as we speak and should be released in the next week or so. When we sat down and discussed the new branding and initiatives of SymVolli, it was decided that video would be an integral part of getting our message out to people, not just in what our products offer but in discussing everyday business problems and solving them. We think that offering useful information to our prospects and customers is a great thing and offering different ways in which we get that information out is only good for users.

In anticipation of a series of video presentations, discussions and interviews that will be published on http://www.symvolli.com/, the first of what hopes to be many is now available to consume on YouTube. This video is an introduction to SymVolli and gives you an idea of the changes in appearance from the older versions and also discusses the business impacts that SymVolli has in the work place.

Businesses Shouldn't Fear Recession

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 10:21:00 GMT

I, like many others, have watched with concern over the past months as companies have announced falling profits as a result of the global economic hardships following the US sub-prime fiasco. So it is always pleasant to hear when companies are doing well, as Standard Life announced today when their annual profits rose 32% from last year.

When all around us are using the dreaded “R” word and talking of “tightening belts” ahead of economic slowing, what examples like Standard Life show is that it is possible to be successful in difficult times. What is not in doubt is that the margins between success and failure in a difficult economic environment are that much smaller.

Here at SymVolli we shout about such things as 'business effectiveness' and 'analysing sales processes' so that they can be refined. When times are good some companies can get away with inefficiencies in business processes by focusing on the quantity of sales in the pipeline. When times are bad, that quantity is hard to come by as prospects are equally squeezed by financial constraints. This is when inefficiencies in business processes are exposed.

The gut instinct for some is to cut costs to offset the slowing of the business. Cutting costs usually means downsizing operations either in personnel or business focus. The mistake that is made in doing so is that you expect the same amounts of business to be managed by a smaller company. Not only are you adding pressure on the company to manage the same business but you still have the same inefficiencies in business processes that haven’t been addressed. Ultimately, knee jerk reactions in companies don’t end up saving the situation but prolonging the end.

On the radio this morning, the spokesman for Standard Life attributed the success to “Efficiencies” in the workings of the company even though they like many others suffered negative effects over the past year.

Business effectiveness is all about identifying and focusing on strengths and weaknesses and making the right decisions ahead of changes in the market and economy. Those who know their business can steer their way through any climate and shouldn’t fear recession at all.

Taking Short Cuts In Business

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 17:30:00 GMT

After reading a great forum post by Greg Lester on Sales Management 2.0, I got to wondering about how taking short cuts in everything including business ends up costing more in the long run. Last year, George wrote an article called “A successful business is like a successful athlete” drawing the analogy between business training and athletes.

Great athletes train day in day out working on their strengths and weaknesses to become better than the competition. More often than not, winning competitors can dedicate their success to hard work, determination and natural ability over a significant period of time. There are of course some who think that there is a way of increasing their performance faster by taking short cuts. There is no doubt that drugs are a big problem in sport but if the cases of Ben Johnson and Marion Jones show if you reach the top through cheating then it is more likely that you are going to be found out.

In the same way, successful businesses are found on dedication, hard work and talented individuals, yet there are some businesses that look for short term gains in an attempt to gain something on the competition. Sales is littered with people who will say or do anything to get a deal and though in the short term the sales quota is filled, in most cases the company is left with a bad reputation and cancelled contracts. This can be a problem with blanket telemarketing campaigns that are based purely on converting a percentage of calls en-masse. By playing the numbers game, in some cases, the quality of the pitch is lowered. I’m not saying that this happens in every case, but we have all dealt with aggressive pitches from people who know that a percentage of their calls will respond to those tactics.

The success of a business is based equally on customer retention as it is on new sales. Short cuts in getting new business often end up in poor customer retention.

101 Exclamations

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 18:09:00 GMT

Most of us in our business dealings have come across clients and prospects that think that because they are buying, that somehow they hold Zeus’s thunderbolt over you and can demand anything and everything, and that you will be most happy to comply in order to achieve a sale. I have seen this in various sales situations where as soon as the client leaves, the false smile drops and a tirade of expletives and exclamations follow in an effort to de-stress from such situations.

Why are people like this? Why do people cheat in sports? Why do people commit crime? Because they can get away with it. Maybe this is a simplistic view of social attitudes but I think that it is safe to say that if there wasn’t the possibility of success then certain things wouldn't be attempted. Therefore, prospects who bully and cajole know that some businessman and salespeople will back down and give what is demanded.

The problem with this is that by offering 'that' discount or 'throwing in' those extras in order to pacify a prospect is in effect demeaning not only yourself but the products you are selling. Selling isn’t a dirty word and some people think that it is and can treat you like that, but in effect selling is in its pure sense, offering solutions to problems. If a problem is solved and that solution is valued at a realistic price based on effort, time, materials and life simplification to the customer then that price reflects the worth that you believe that product has. Discounts given can give the impression that your product or solution isn’t worth as much.

The maxim that the customer always knows right has been manipulated by some to mean the customer can get whatever they want. Yes, solutions should be offered based on a prospects needs but should never be at the detriment of yourself or your product.

Businesses are like engine components - that argue with each other

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 14:29:00 GMT

With any product launch the development team are shackled to their desk, fed bread and water and worked 26 hours of the day until they have produced the work to deadline and finally that day has come and SymVolli has been let loose to work business magic. As such, up until now I have been very busy with the branding and design of the new look SymVolli software not to mention the new symvolli website (and of course this site as well).

It's at the most demanding times when you get to know the character of the business and though I wouldn't say the last few months have been difficult, what I would say is that in any successful business there needs to be certain periods of collective determination to act to goals. If not, then a company remains laid back and doesn't realise it's potential (Almost exactly the comments on all my school reports up until I left).

In its most basic sense a business is like an engine with different components (George wrote a detailed article about something similar entitled Why the sales process is like a high performance engine?), you have a marketing component that feeds the business, you have a sales component that consumes the sales fuel and converts it into energy (money), you have a management module that drives the engine etc etc.

All these different components, like an engine not only have specific tasks to do within the company but must work in conjunction with the other components. If one of these engine parts aren't aligned with the others then complications arise. This is one of the issues that the new SymVolli system addresses by working with aligning different departmental efforts and promoting a joint effort without the negativity you sometimes encounter inter-departmentally.

When a business is operating at a demanding schedule, perhaps working to a deadline or pulling out all the stops to close an important deal, that is when the engine is working at it's hardest and that is when you find out if there is enough oil to keep it running.

SymVolli is Launched Offering Not Only a Greater Business Performance System but Three Extra Modules

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 16:40:00 GMT

Yesterday, SymVolli was launched to the public and for the first time our clients and prospects can see the changes to the existing system and the new features that have been added. It is hard to believe seeing what we have demonstrated to business partners and clients so far, the major developments that SymVolli has gone through over previous versions.

To begin with, SymVolli is more of a complete business solution that benefits not only sales, but marketing, finance, operations and upper management, whereas the previous version of SalesVision as the name implies was more sales focused.

With SymVolli, three new SymVolli modules have been created to compliment the SymVolli system. Based on characteristics of the main system, these modules have been fully developed to offer greater enhancements in key business areas. These modules are:

SymVolli Conductor – Contact Management Module

View, create and send emails, tasks and appointments in a familiar environment within SymVolli. Not only this, but assign key activities to centralised areas in SymVolli itself so that you have an audit of correspondence.
SymVolli Critic – Business Intelligence Module

In the same way finance sectors can get up-to-the-minute information on stock markets, SymVolli Critic is a dashboard that gives you up to the minute information about your business.
SymVolli Maestro – Business Process Management Module

All businesses operate on a business process and should be adhered to. SymVolli Maestro is a system that monitors business activities in relation to your business processes and can interact, notify and initiate further activities automatically.

And finaly, with SymVolli being a new product with a new name, there is also a new website. For information on SymVolli visit http://www.symvolli.com/.

for more information on the launch of SymVolli read our press release.

Thanks to All for a Successful Business Partner Launch

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Last Friday we held an awareness and launch event for the business partners of SymVolli which went fantastically. There we showed the first view of SymVolli that is to be launched to the public tomorrow. The Event was graciously hosted by Penguins a current system user who is due to be one of the first companies to implement the new SymVolli system into their business.

Friday’s event was a success not only because of what we showed to those who would be closest in dealing with the new product but in gauging the feedback from our partners that we so value. I often think that interest is often measured by how much discussion is created and certainly on Friday we had a lot of different opinions and discussions on several matters.

I personally would like to thank Mark Buist (MD of Penguins) for allowing us to use Penguins facility and would like to thank amongst others Dave Sharpe (Hot Rivet), Tony Shuebridge and Grant Healy (MLS), Nick Coutts, Vik Patel, Peter Rees (Virtual Internet), Peter Klein (Company Coach), John Busby (BKC), Jim Duncan, Dan Blake and Lucy Hammond (Clikview) for attending and contributing to a thoroughly wonderful day.

Business Partner SymVolli Launch being held at Penguins

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 15:58:00 GMT

With the launch of the new SymVolli product next Tuesday, we are holding a SymVolli awareness and product launch session for our Business Partners on Friday. Penguins, a current SalesVision client and one of the first to be able to implement SymVolli into their company, have been kind enough to host this launch event which we hope to video for those who wish to view what happened online.

The itinerary for the launch event, without giving the game away is going to consist of an overview of the new SymVolli product and also the new components that have been introduced to SymVolli. On behalf of the SymVolli team we extend our thanks to Penguins for hosting this event and hope that it is informative for those attending.

Launch date of New SymVolli product announced

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 10:02:00 GMT

When a plane goes into approach of the landing strip, the engines go into overdrive to give more power to the plane so that it can complete the final manoeuvre. And that is what it feels like as the final few weeks go into the official launch of SymVolli which we are pleased to announce is going to be released on the 26th of February.

The SymVolli team are in overdrive in preparations for the launch and the unveiling of SymVolli to the public. It is both an exciting time and highly taut as with every launch everyone is on tender hooks in getting everything right.

Further announcements about the launch will be given in the coming week.

With a New Product Comes a New Name - SalesVision is Now SymVolli

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 16:28:00 GMT

So, the spring cleaning has started and you might have noticed a new look to the blog and website and a new name to what was once SalesVision. The name we have replaced SalesVision with is “SymVolli” which is derived from the Greek word meaning ‘contribution’ which we think embodies the spirit in which our product utilises the most benefit to companies. What SymVolli in essence does, is work with the contribution of individuals to the overall performance of a company, perfecting processes and making the company more effective.

Another reason why we have changed the name to SymVolli is that in testing our products in different global markets ‘SalesVision’ drew too much focus onto sales alone. The new product SymVolli that is shortly to be released contributes to the effectiveness of the whole company not just sales, therefore marketing, finance, operations etc. are able to see business analysis information relevant to their own departments. Whereas, SalesVision 6 is primarily a sales performance management software, SymVolli is a complete system that enhances managerial capabilities by offering business intelligence, business process management and CRM efficiency.

So, what I alluded to at the beginning of the year with regards to new developments this year, starts with a new look, a new name and shortly – a new product. Watch this space, the next few weeks are going to be packed full of new announcements and developments.

For more information about the new branding change click here

An Exciting New Year Ahead for Sales Development

Wed, 02 Jan 2008 18:39:00 GMT

I read what I wrote this time last year for new years and much of what I said then is relevant now. Every business should at some point take stock of where they have been and what their business has done the past year and set goals for the following year. As is so often said, you can’t know where you are going unless you know where you are and to know that you need to know how you got there.

What a lot of businesses do is a perfunctory nod to this exercise by just simply setting goals on the previous year’s figures and aiming to beat them. You will often see how pleased a sales manager may be when the quarterly figures show that they are a percentage above the same time the preceding annum. However, percentage increases can don’t necessarily mean success or even improvement. Inflation means that our increased efforts and higher figures are only achieving parity rather than gain.

What this time really means is an opportunity to review and aim for exciting new heights, discovering new ideas and planning for new beginnings rather than just doing the same as before and hoping to do better.

This year is going to be exciting for the SalesVision team in that there are some really big new developments on the horizons and the developments to what is already a powerful sales performance tool is going to travel in some very interesting ways. The next few months are going to be a frantic hive of activity here and we are relishing the challenge that 2008 will bring.

We hope that you all have a happy, fulfilling and successful new year

Happy Birthday and Happy Christmas

Wed, 19 Dec 2007 17:43:00 GMT

In the final week before Christmas, this week is the week where in effect we are saying goodbye to this year. As so often is the case, this is a time of reflection both personally and as a business to reflect on the trials and triumphs of the past twelve months. As I was reflecting in between finishing up client work, it occurred to me that about this time last year we started this blog, so not only are we celebrating Christmas but a birthday as well. You will have noticed that post’s have been less frequent of late and that is due to the level of work that the whole SalesVision team are in at the moment. We literally are so busy at the moment that our extra activities have suffered.

Next year looks like it is going to be even busier and there are many exciting prospects on the horizon both with SalesVision itself and other business. I would like to take the opportunity on behalf of George and the rest of the team to say thank you for all those who have contacted us and corresponded over the past year, it has been educating and rewarding to speak to like minded people. I guess it leaves me to say, happy Christmas from all the SalesVision team and we wish you a prosperous and successful new year.

How to Become an Evil Corporate Company

Wed, 14 Nov 2007 11:53:00 GMT

We all know that companies like McDonalds, Starbucks, Tesco, Microsoft etc. are all evil and are taking over the world… at least that is what you are likely to hear if any opinion was offered on any of these companies (never mind that these companies success rely upon a great proportion of the public liking and buying their products, including those same people who offer those opinions). The chances are that you are unlikely to hear fond sentiments about big multi-million pound conglomerates. However, I'll bet that every business person would kill (figuratively I hope) for the chance to drive their business to the successful heights of the big players.

This thought played on my mind as I sat down at a local coffee house. This coffee house wasn't a big chain and was situated in the middle of nowhere and had no comfy furniture or pleasant jazz music playing in the background. What this place offered, made itself clear to me as I waited for the owner of the shop to carefully make my coffee while explaining where and how he made the coffee. What this place offered was character, personality and soul.

The character of a business is built on the people that run it. When you visit a small coffee shop or second hand bookstore hidden away and run by an eccentric old man it is easier to see the whole character of the business because it is reflected in that person standing in front of you. The bigger your organisation gets the more the character of the business is diluted into the people that customers meet until you have such a huge company that you are employing people who don't have the same belief structure and passions that you have. The reason that big corporate companies are so typified as soulless is because more often than not the person that you are directly contacting at the company is a part-time student earning minimum wage who couldn't care less about the overall business and that reflects on your perception of the company.

This is the sad fact of business life. Can this be avoided? Not if your organisation gets that big, but then if it does, would you really care?

A Tale of Two Sales People

Tue, 30 Oct 2007 14:57:00 GMT

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times - and quite literally this reflects two encounters I have had with sales people in the last week.

I was privy to a call my sister made on the phone to a car salesman after she had seen an advert on the internet. She was keen to buy a car and was quite impressed with the advert, so she calls the dealer up. Here is an excerpt:

Sis: Does the car have traction control?
Salesperson: No, the model doesn’t have traction control. Only later models have traction control.
Sis: Well, my father has this make, model and same age car and his does.
Salesperson: What do you need traction control for, are you going Raleigh racing.

My sister left this call totally determined not to buy this car and the attitude of the salesperson left her angry. The sales person was rude, talked down to her (most probably because she was a woman) and made up for his lack of knowledge by belittling his prospect.

Contrast this with a letter that I received in the post the other day, that had a pair of contact lenses and a note saying:

Dear Mr Thompson, due to the postal strike we thought we would send you out this pair of contact lenses to tide you over just in case your replacements arrive late

OK, due to the postal strike this letter didn't arrive until after my replacements, but I still appreciated the notion and I'll remember that when I decide to go for another check up. I had frankly forgotten that I was due for a batch of replacements but the thoughtful person who sent that letter not only reinforced the sales relationship that we have but most probably ensured that they have repeat business from me.

Starting a sales process going is probably the hardest part of generating a sales pipeline so assuming your prospective client is an idiot is a sure way of minimising the chances of generating a sale, yet once a sales cycle is started it doesn't necessarily have to end at the sale. Most people forget that it is easier to sell to existing happy clients, so why ignore them until you need them. It is a far far better thing to keep them familiar with you.

Why would you need to sell ice to the Eskimos?

Mon, 15 Oct 2007 18:10:00 GMT

This is one of those dilemmas, where you have the choice of employing a sales person for your company and are faced with two candidates. The first is a person who knows the ins and outs of the company, the product and the clients and the second is a born sales person, someone who you would associate with the term “selling ice to the Eskimos”. This person can sell anything whether he knew what the product did or not. Who wouldn’t be tempted by such a person. The first person knows his stuff but isn’t as confident, you really know that if you hired the second person your sales figures are going to look definitely healthier. So who do you hire?

Actually if it was down to me, I would hire both. Let me explain. I have worked with “born sales people” before and selling for many involves steering customers down a path of reasoning chosen by the sales person. The confidence in such a person is enough to engineer confidence in the product. What I don’t like is that too often that path of reasoning that the sales person takes the prospect is a path of their own making which too often doesn’t take the prospects problems into consideration.

The first sales person who knows everything is likely to be more involved in the prospects needs and bases sales pitches on detailed knowledge. What I like about this person is a need to solve a problem. What they perhaps lack is the charisma to focus on selling the solution.

Ideally, I would love to blend the two and temper the enthusiasm of the born sales person with the knowledge of the product thereby reducing the risk of selling off base. If I had to choose just the one, I would choose the knowledgeable sales person. Focusing on needs and solutions will result in better clients. The risks of “selling ice to the Eskimos” is that eventually they will find out they’ve got plenty of it around and that they have been mis-sold something. Not something that you will want your company associated with even if the sales figures are great.

A Sales Person Always Has Something To Learn

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 16:32:00 GMT

Socrates is meant to have said “I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing”.

Now, I am not going to go this far, as admitting that you know nothing in a sales presentation isn’t going to go down that well. Without getting into ancient Greek philosophy, what I take from this quote is the very idea that no matter where you are, or how much experience you have, there is always more to learn.

There is a phrase that many sales people will avoid at all costs and that is “I don’t know”. No matter what field you are in and how much experience you have, there is going to be something that you don’t know, and this is what a lot of sales people fear. However, the irony of this situation is that in dealing with ‘not knowing’ something, a sales person’s efforts in avoiding admitting to this fact can in ways be more damaging than admitting it in the first place.

Believe it or not, a prospective client doesn’t think that you are a superhuman with a photographic memory and an encyclopedic knowledge of everything. What is dangerous is purporting to know something in the pursuit of a sale when you don’t. The worst case scenario is that you get the job on this basis and end out of your depth. It is also not that wise to assume that your prospective client also knows nothing and that they won’t see past an attempt at bluffing the issue.

I have been in situations where I have had to admit to a client that I don’t know something and the response has been almost a sigh of relief. You see, the greatest thing that a prospective client can get from a sales person is a feeling of trust and funnily enough telling the truth, even if it may seem detrimental to your cause, can help in giving that trust. After all, we are only human.

Is cold calling a relic of a bygone age?

Fri, 28 Sep 2007 13:05:00 GMT

After reading Ed Roach’s article on overcoming the cold calling selling challenge I got to thinking about whether cold calling still had a place in modern day business strategy. I too had a brief stint in selling over the phone, and like Ed, found picking up and dialling a number to a perfect stranger an intimidating experience and even after several months that phone still cast an aura of menacing fear every time I sat down and picked up the receiver.

Truth to tell, I never thought that I would be any good at selling on the phone, so when I made that first sale to someone who didn’t know what I looked like and had only some 20-30 minutes of history to judge me on, I was in complete shock. Selling on the phone was possible! Of course, I had my fair share of abuse and rejection which when it happened didn’t seem half as bad, but then that fear of the next call never went away.

Now, I hate being called up and sold phones, double glazing etc. when I’m having dinner so in the end direct selling to other people wasn’t for me, however I concede that in the business to business world cold calling is still a predominant part of gaining new business. That initial call is made not to sell your product but to sell yourself (as all calls are) so that you can inspire the need to form a continuance or relationship whereby you have a platform in which to sell your product in the future. But is it still necessary?

In today’s world with emails, forums, blogs, websites etc. the idea that there is only one way that you can form a relationship with a new prospect is indeed past. With regards to SalesVision business there have been many avenues that have both proactively and passively taken place. Enquiries through our contact form, customer’s calling us directly from an email marketing campaign or a long term relationship built in a business forum and the exchange of common ideas. Yet, this doesn’t mean that cold calling is not necessary anymore. What changes in technology have instigated is a change in the cold calling environment. Pre-internet a cold call would be indeed that – cold. Information about the business, the personality of the client, his tastes and ideas would be severely limited. Today, a cold call can be initalised with as much knowledge about the person you talk to. Cold calling isn’t cold anymore, you don’t have to start a conversation with a stranger anymoreand technology and the internet can help form trust and relationships before the call is made.

If the object of cold calling is to find common ground and information to base future partnerships then this is not necessarily the environment to do it anymore. Instead, think of that call as a focus of that knowledge that you can already get elsewhere. Cold calling is indeed a relic of a bygone age – warm calling is the future of gaining new business.

Sales: A Necessary Evil?

Fri, 21 Sep 2007 15:15:00 GMT

Ron Finklestein’s blog article entitled …But I Could Never Sell is a well written anecdote on perceptions of sales by both sales people themselves and those outside the sales environment. The perception that selling is a bad thing or that a sales job is a 'necessary evil' is perhaps attributed by the typical sales persons stereotype of flogging anything at any cost. I have alluded to the same in previous articles, especially with regards to sales diagnosis.

Basically, what we are saying is the same thing. If you are helping someone make a right decision then what is bad about that. Sure, if you are trying to make someone make a decision that is against their judgement then you are using coercion and you do a disservice to all morally based sales people who get tarnished with that brush, however, offering help to someone should always be considered a benefit and should be something that sales people should be proud of.

If selling is a bad thing, then in direct concequence, buying itself is bad. Now, I try and pull this one all the time with the other half, but try convincing a serial shopper that 'buying a brand new pair of prada shoes is bad' and this doesn't go down well. As Ron, says in his article The fact is, we love to buy and we love to own. If there was no guidance in buying, then we would all be making a lot more purchasing mistakes.

Selling is part and parcel of everyday life. Without it we would be in a totally different world. Is it a necessary evil? Necessary, yes, but not evil, and the sooner we become more positive about it the better.

Being Extremely Busy Is No Excuse in Business

Fri, 07 Sep 2007 11:46:00 GMT

Cripes! It’s been a while since anyone has posted anything on the blog and since I am the forefront advocate of blogging in the company, I must hold my hand up and accept the blame for lack of penmanship… and no, I don’t use the word ‘cripes’ in normal conversation.

When I studied web design I remember a lecturer of mine telling me never to trust a web designer whose personal web site was amazingly designed. The theory of this was that someone who had the time to spend designing a personal web site wasn’t very busy and therefore less experienced ergo a gamble to employ as a designer. Now, this is pretty harsh, I know, but the reason that we haven’t been able to blog for some time is the very lame excuse of being extremely busy. If we apply my lecturers theory to blogging then we are very trustworthy.

I disagree, however, with this idea. Being busy is no excuse for anything in business, whether it is blogging or dealing with customers. The customer that you turn away because you are too busy on the phone or too grumpy because you have too much work may be the one that adversely affects your business in the long run. Relationships are a fragile and important part of any company and ignoring some because you have “more important things to do” is no excuse and is also a potential danger.

Penguins, One of the Leading Events Organisers of the UK allies with SalesVision

Tue, 14 Aug 2007 10:52:00 GMT

In the sometimes messy world of PR and advertising, the name of the game is blowing your own trumpet and shouting louder than the other guy about how good you are. Yes, there is a fine line between showing your best side and bragging and here at SalesVision we try very hard to make our PR relevant and informative rather than just a hard sell. That is why this blog rarely has contained any direct sales pitches or trumpet blowing, because we think that would turn our readers off.

However… there are always exceptions.

Penguins, have been one of our closest business relationships over the past year or so with regards to developing SalesVision. They have used and are implementing and testing SalesVision to it’s limits and so when we were given the go ahead to announce Penguins corporate alliance with future SalesVision development, we were understandably happy.

SalesVision is a system that is primarily sales orientated but with the added benefit of fitting into the client company structure so that it reflects the clients sales processes. Penguins, which is a leading corporate events organiser isn’t your typical product focused sales company, so SalesVision’s successful integration into the Penguins environment means a healthy endorsement to SalesVision’s flexibility. You will have to forgive the upbeat euphoria at such news and perhaps you will have to also forgive our shouting loud about it.

Self Doubt Is One of the Biggest Killers of a Successful Business Venture

Tue, 24 Jul 2007 10:12:00 GMT

I was reading “My Apprenticeship” by Beatrice Webb the other day – It’s not the kind of book you dip into and I’m not a student of sociology, but, for heavens sake, the woman is my Great-Great Aunt, so I thought that I ought to get to know more about her. It was an inspiration.

This remarkable woman was by any stretch of the imagination a polymath of the first order. She spoke several languages, investigated the social and economic impacts of the cooperative movement, trades unions, sweated labour and a whole host of embryonic social and economic sciences. All without a formal degree. With the gift of hindsight, we can see that she got an awful lot wrong – batted herself into the socially attractive arguments of the time and both supported and used philosophies which are regarded now as being the works of cranks. (Her writings are littered with accurate observations about the shape of people’s heads mainly, as far as I can see because Herbert Spencer, one of her mentors, was a phrenologist – he deduced people’s innate character from the bumps on their skull!) It is therefore easy to trash what she did as being of little use. In truth she agonised over the value of her contributions because of her lack of learning, lack of appropriate insights and general inability to clearly take a work to its conclusion.

However, against all the odds, she went ahead and worked, got herself published and widely read, helped to steer the growing socialist movement toward power and influence and founded the London School of Economics. That’s not bad for someone who was so wracked with self doubt that she nearly didn’t set pen to paper in anything more important than her manuscript diaries.

So why don’t we learn from example? A lot of questions which are thrown at us today have answers which are beyond our reach, but if we make a stab at getting to the point, we will probably have moved closer to learning something useful. In my profession of sales and marketing, a lot of projects never get off the ground because we are filled with self doubt. Very few go to ruin because a large number of people got the wrong idea. Most fail because many people failed to do anything.

So if you’ve got a bright idea, write it down and discuss it. It may not gain acceptance and it may be rejected, but it will have moved both you and those you share it with closer to something useful. I was once Marketing Manager to a very experienced MD. “I don’t know why you employ me”, I once said in frustration, “You always reject 9 out of 10 of my ideas”

“That’s why I employ you and why I’m the MD” he said. “It’s my job to take responsibility for scrapping 9 potentially good proposals and running with just one. It’s your job to come up with and then evaluate all 10” In four years we came up with 7 market winners which powered the company’s growth for 10 years.

Follow Mrs Webb’s example, write it down and discuss it.

Are You A Sales Doctor? Do You Diagnose the Problem and Solve It?

Mon, 23 Jul 2007 11:54:00 GMT

When George showed me his latest article “A Product Becomes a Solution Only When It Solves a Customers Problem” I admit that I was intrigued at the simplicity of the message and slightly taken aback at George’s reply to this.

“Yes”, he said, “You are quite right, it is simple, yet you wouldn’t believe how many sales people still don’t realise it. It is one of the greatest barriers to effective sales presentations…”

George also put it in a different way that I thought really summarised the entire thing in a nutshell and I paraphrase what he said.

If you enter a Doctors Office, you don’t sit down and wait for the Doctor to present his latest solution to you. “Boy, have I got a great solution, I have discovered the cure for Brain tumours it is guaranteed to cure every known brain illness there is. How many should I put you down for….?”. Of course this doesn’t happen, especially if you are wanting to see the doctor about an upset stomach.

The usual protocol in visiting a doctor is that he asks questions and develops a profile of the problem before diagnosing and prescribing a solution. Any doctor that presumes on diagnosis before getting all the facts is liable for big trouble. So why don’t Sales People act in the same way?

Sales people have been tarnished with the brushes left by pushy second-hand car dealers, aggressive tele-sales operatives and egotistical sales personel intent on one thing – commission. Why? - Because in most cases, the commission is the driving force behind making a sale.

What if sales people were considered, like Doctors, to be facilitators of solutions to people’s problems. How do we go about doing that? By diagnosing a person’s problem and offering a solution. In George’s article, he asks the question “How many times does a sales person start a sales presentation with a demonstration of their product?” A Sales Doctor wouldn’t go about it that way, he would find out what needs the client has before making a presentation based around that perceived need.

Online Business Information - Hindrance or Necessity?

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 10:36:00 GMT

How many times have you gone to download something only to be faced with the prospect of a lengthy form that you have to fill out? How many times have you tried to view a web page yet find that you have to register first? At what point do these mechanisms become prohibitive?

In today’s modern day and age, 9 times out of 10, a user is faced with filling out a form before being able to download anything. Often this is so sales can follow up the enquiry a couple of days post download. However, sales will tell you that if you choose not to fill out the form that automatically qualifies you out of being a potential prospect. From the point of view of a webmaster it is so as we know who is downloading what.

We, at Nomis have adopted the mechanism that if you give us a genuine email, the system will email you a link as to where your download can be found.

However, at what point do these mechanisms, whether it be the declaration of a genuine email or the registration of an simple ‘account’, actually become prohibitive as opposed to proactive. It is not uncommon for people to have multiple email addresses and what’s more it is not uncommon for people, when downloading or registering, to declare a free email address as opposed to a company one or one they regularly use; I know it happens… I do it. I have an email account that I use to download and register. The main reason… SPAM. I direct all comunication as a result of downloading etc. to my free email address leaving me to live my daily life viagra free. All too often, email addresses seem to fall into the ‘wrong’ hands. If you believe rumours and scare mungoring, you should not ‘unsubscribe’ as all that happens is that your email address gets taken off one list and then placed on another. Whether this be true or not the effect that it is having on business is in part detrimental. Detrimental because people are now opting not to fill out forms, therefore companies have to offer free downloads or suffer silence. Silence is not golden.

PS. Interesting exercise - if you could go through a person’s inbox to try and decifer what kind of person they were, what kind of picture would you end up painting.

Those sales leads were a waste of time!

Tue, 10 Jul 2007 11:19:00 GMT

How many times have I heard that when talking to a sales person. It usually is in response to leads that have been generated from a telemarketing campaign. It might be true, but how can it be proved. What is needed is a two way accountability, the telemarketing company to the client and the client back to the telemarketing company. Many try to get a reporting mechanism working but in most cases it is seen by the sales person as an administrative burden without much if any return. No matter how much emphasis is placed on feedback being used to refine the lead generation campaign, sales people in the main see this as the marketing department's responsibility and they just want to get on with selling.

So we need a process by which both sides are fully aware as to what is happening with a lead without continual harassment for updates.

In developing SalesVision’s qualification profiling we sat down and actively set out to remedy this situation by allowing the telemarketing company to initiate contact, identify a lead, pass it on to the client and watch the progress being made without continually requesting for updates. The purpose of the exercise is to bring marketing and sales together with free flow of information so that processes and campaigns can be improved with the sole aim of achieving if not surpassing sales targets.

So what did happen to the last batch of leads you got from a telemarketing campaign? What was the cost in sales peons' morale in having to report?

Keep it simple and it will work.

Marketing Our Sales Software In Our Underwear. A Good thing or Not?

Fri, 06 Jul 2007 10:38:00 GMT

Reading blogs yesterday I came across this interesting article debating the viability of “shock and awe publicity” recalling a particular PR exercise where a CEO conducted a web conference in his underwear. Now first thing’s first, the chances of that happening in this company are thankfully very low, but it got me thinking about how marketing, especially online can too often take the ‘smash and grab’ approach to advertising, whereas an advert does all it can to grab attention and leave an impression of any kind. The product itself is a secondary thought as long as the memory of the advert remains.

Most consumers these days are very smart to advertisers and there is now a huge cynicism in this approach to advertising as traditional media advertising seems to have less impact in general. There is a saying that ‘there is no such thing as bad publicity’ and I think the geniuses who came up with the ‘underwear’ PR strategy firmly believed in this, however what these stunts do is raise awareness in the wrong value judgements in the brand and product that it is aimed at promoting. If I were to run a similar campaign for SalesVision the result (apart from my dismissal) would certainly be greater exposure and possibly short term media exposure (probably the Sun), but would that increase the viability of our software to our clients and potential customers?

Shock tactic advertising aims purely at the short term memory recollection, so this exercise would not benefit us at all for one reason. Our MD may develop a brand of his own for ‘being the man who did that advert’, but our product association created from this type of PR would in all likelihood miss it’s intended mark ie. A sales software for companies who wish to increase sales forecasting accuracy. In all likelihood, the only time, if any, you are going to remember an advert like this is in the underwear section of Debenhams…not the place we want you to be thinking of sales software.

As I said earlier, the public, I think is getting wise to this type of media advertising, particularly online. Here at SalesVision our marketing aims are intended to be long term by showing our ethos, work ethic, concepts, and personality. By appearing as we are, we hope to show the development of our company and promote trust in our product. This may be a slower and less impact orientated process, but we think that in the long run that is a better marketing policy.

What do you call a justification, vindication and recrimination meeting? A sales meeting.

Tue, 03 Jul 2007 10:12:00 GMT

In most companies where we have been involved in reviewing their sales environment, it has been noted that sales meetings are generally used to explain why forecasts made at the last sales meeting did not occur, and how everything possible was done but in most cases it was due to forces outside of ones control.

Yet the sales manager will ask the same questions, going though the same process to discover why things did not happen. How about if the questions were asked well in advance to discover what could disturb progress towards getting the sale and so making sure the necessary actions were taken to minimise any problems?

That would mean the sales manager becoming a coach and qualifying each of the opportunities that each sales person is working on. That's a lot of work. Well, we at Nomis have developed SalesVision, our sales qualification system. We work with management to develop a business's sales qualification process so that they can articulate it to the sales force. This is implemented into SalesVision so that he whole of the sales team can use it. It's as if each sales person has their own sales manager.

Guess what... the sales manager can add value to the sales process. He can help the sales person get the order. After all, his or her sales reports are produced from SalesVision based on qualified information thereby cutting down on inquisition so spending more time on sales acquisition.

Sales Ailments: You can trust me I'm a doctor.

Thu, 28 Jun 2007 09:49:00 GMT

Why is there a perception by some in the business to business (b2b) sector that all sales people are only interested in one thing, their commission?

Could it be that we have all been tarred with the same brush?

I have worked with many sales people who have had to deal with long sales cycles before getting an order from a client and then carried on with maintaining a strong relationship that was mutually beneficial. Guess what, they made more commission compared to the 'get in, get out stop mucking about' sales person.

They cared about their client. They wanted to know what was going on and the problems and difficulties that their client was encountering. They took the approach that they were a physician and as a good physician they listened to the patient but waited until they had as much information as possible before discussing any remedy, the possible solution. The solution could be administered over a period, not unlike a remedy. And when the solution was fully implemented the sales person would carry out timely health checks to ensure that the objectives were being met or whether further remedies would be required to help the client meet future objectives.

A doctor doesn't rush in and open his medicine bag and start presenting all the medicines he carries. He finds out what the problem is and then prescribes what the patient needs.

So let us bring some credibility to the phrase 'trust me I'm a sales person' instead of the connotation of self interest. Let us get our clients to accept that a sales person is like a business doctor and therefore 'we trust him, he has our interest at heart'. Listen to the client. Gain his trust. Add value to what he offers to his clients through your solution. And lastly, maintain a strong mutually beneficial relationship.

When Does Doing Something On The Cheap become Expensive?

Wed, 27 Jun 2007 10:05:00 GMT

A potential customer approaches you in order to inquire as to your services and offerings; amongst the questions he/she will invariably ask will be “How much does it cost?”. However, is too much emphasis being placed upon money and not enough upon the value of the service or the offering? In a world that is driven and governed by budgets at what point does doing something on the cheap actually become expensive?

The customer will always be concerned with how much it costs however it is the skill of the salesman to show the customer that the cost is far outweighed by the value. It is pointless buying something which ‘kind of’ does the job or ‘kind of’ suits your needs; it either does or does not. How many times have you heard of companies implementing systems for them not to be adopted by employees because it does not do the tasks it was bought for, therefore it is easier to stick to say pencil and paper? The cost here is two fold: employees become despondent and go against procedures management is trying to adopt (time, effort and money are wasted) and then there is the obvious cost in buying the system and training people to use it.

The value proposition of any service/offering etc needs to be clear and concise. No matter the scenario whether it be at home trying to convince someone of the merits of watching a particular television programme or in front of a customer trying to get them to buy your product, a ‘sales pitch’ is taking place. The value proposition of a piece of software, for example, is not something that can be clearly defined prior to meeting with a customer (unless you already have an insight into the customers business). It is not something that can be generated by cobbling together a list of unique selling points (USPs). What is of use and value to one customer may not be of use or value to another. Careful analysis of the customer’s needs has to be carried out in order to see whether what you are proposing will fulfil their requirements, hence value proposition.

USPs set your services and offerings apart from the competition. Value propositions will convince the ‘customer’ to ‘buy’.

Never Mind the Quality Feel the Width

Fri, 22 Jun 2007 15:36:00 GMT

My father was a Saville Row tailor and every Sunday we would go to Petticoat Lane in the east end of London to buy cloth for him to make suits for his clients. Even as a child I do not remember any of the proud owners of these establishments, who also doubled up as the sales persons, ever saying to my father feel how thick is the material. They always focused on the quality of the material, its resilience, lightness, and of course its attractiveness.

So why do many companies treat the sales pipeline so differently? In many cases it is not the quality that is of interest but how many names of companies are in the list. I nearly called them opportunities. Is this so different from feeling the width rather judging the quality? Surely, management taking time out to define the sales qualification process for their business and handing it down to their sales force to use would go a long way in developing a quality pipeline that could be relied upon. Management should stand back and admire the suit because of their expertise in choosing the right cloth and making sure it fitted the customer.

What do you think?

Fear In Management. Is It In Our DNA?

Tue, 19 Jun 2007 10:14:00 GMT

Nesh's blog on fear and fear of making mistakes resonated with a bit I wrote for Palak Parakh, on MarketingProfs where he asked in their “Just for Fun” section a question entitled Making Mistakes It stimulated an amazing response from which I’ve edited one of my contributions for this blog.

Please forgive me if I launch into some of my “serious” subjects, which are usually, Mathematics, Analytics, Science and just for this question, Neural Networking, Anthropic Theory and Statistical Thermodynamics.

Learning from our mistakes is not only vital to our individual development, but also to the success of individual businesses and business as a whole. I’d even go as far as to argue that it is inherent in nature, that it is found world-wide in successful economic, biological, electronic and chemical systems. If fact it is found wherever there is the presence of any form of life capable of observing it and quite a few systems which do not involve living things.

That’s why Nesh’s view chimes with mine – if we give people the ability to see where they are going in business, we give them advance sight of their success or failure and uniquely, human beings, unlike animals, plants or inanimate systems, have the ability to change things if it is too their benefit. They have to see where they are going first though.

“To err is human, to forgive divine” is a quotation from Alexander Pope – 1677-1744 (OK, Admit it, who thought that it was Shakespeare!?) who, not surprisingly knew very little about modern business management theory or about advanced cosmology. He produced some cracking quotations though and littering an after-dinner speech with bits of Pope along with the more lunatic fringe elements of MarketingProfs will allow you to raise your speaking fees without limit.

Learning by your mistakes may be a “Good Thing” (Sellars and Yeatman, 1066 and all that) and this is backed up by Darwinian evolution. Nature’s mistakes die off so they can’t breed. Their Gene’s fail. Human beings learn from our mistakes without necessarily dying, though sometimes we just can’t stop ourselves. (Take recreational Drugs, American Gun Law, Cigarettes and the Music of Phillip Glass as good examples of the suicidal tendency of humanity) By writing things down and recording our experiences, both good and bad, we and our children and our children’s children benefit from our experiences.

Assuming, that is, that they haven’t been educated in the English State School system in the last 10 years, in which case they can’t read, so they can’t benefit.

Neural networks work by learning form what works, what works best and what doesn’t work as well or doesn’t work at all. A neural approach to a problem will take the desired result or outcome and the available resources (The resources could be data or electronic circuits or bits of DNA) and the neural programme combines them and sees what happens. If the resulting algorithm or circuit or bit of protein does what you intended it to, the programme remembers the success. If it is a failure or an approach that works less well that it did the last time, then it remembers that too. It learns from its mistakes by avoiding doing the same thing or the same class of thing in future combinations.

So are mistakes inevitable or can we evolve a way of working which would eradicate them? I think that most of us have worked for some idiot who seems to think that it is possible to totally eradicate them, but even if it was possible, entropically (That’s a thermodynamic term for disorder) it is extremely expensive to maintain this – ask any economist who used to work for the Soviet Communist Government. It didn’t matter how many scientists and economists they shot due to their “mistakes” the remainder were never well motivated enough, even by the threat of death to, get the command economy to work. Entropy killed it and the failure to let the market and the people learn by trial end error or their mistakes brought down an empire.

So we appear to live in a world which is filled with mistakes, apparently to our benefit, if we have the will to analyse them and to use that analysis for changing things. Physics precludes determinism, because it is anti-entropic. Ergo, things will go wrong. Chaos theory prevents predictions of the future to any accuracy if the maths has negative feedback and is non linear – I.e. most of life. Individual forecasting overcomes this by taking the outcome for an entire enterprise to be the sum of its intelligent parts and modifying the model by past experience. Darwinian evolution is based on mistakes happening and being eliminated through selection and even religion tends to accept a flawed relationship between man and God where we are for ever cocking things up. To his eternal frustration and anguish.

What about the entire universe then. After all, statistical thermodynamics works out most of the laws of physics from looking at small numbers of particles and then just raw numbers. Hey-ho, when you add these canonical ensembles together and do the sums, you get the gas laws. Then you get the rest of the laws of thermodynamics. What about a mistake ridden universe – is this implied from the fact that our planet is ridden with them.

The answer would appear to be probably. The Anthropic principal basically looks at the probability of finding things which we can observe on earth and from earth being discovered elsewhere, such as life, intelligence, Chardonnay and BMW 750i’s. The answer is yes, but it’s down to the curious quirk of the Anthropic principal which states that this is so, just because we are around to observe it. If the basic physical constants of the universe didn’t support the evolution (Or creation, if you prefer) of intelligent life, we, rather obviously, wouldn’t be around to observe it. Or invent the foot-spa or the air freshener or the radio. So simply because we have evolved to the level of being able to observe things and to write twaddle like this, the chances of the cosmos being littered with other “things” that go round making mistakes is actually quite high. It’s about a 12% probability according to cosmologists.

And I’ll bet you that on the planet Zog, the Quirgian master race makes as big a cock-up of forecasting that we do. Rejoice, we are not alone!

Failure in the UK Sales Environment is not an option

Mon, 18 Jun 2007 10:27:00 GMT

Following on from the article putting forward whether fear is a good motivational tool, we have first got to try and put a definition on what I believe fear is due to; failure. Well, to me failure is when you have set a goal and do not achieve it but do nothing to rectify the situation.

So why should so many people fear failure? Could it be that it is a cultural thing as well as a personal thing. What do I mean by that? Well when I worked for an American company, as part of the European team therefore answerable to Corporate HQ, they saw not achieving an objective as part of the learning curve. They were more interested in the reaction to not achieving the objective and what course of action you were going to take as a consequence of it. Coaching rather than management was the key. It could happen a second time and there would be greater scrutiny of the whole incident to ensure that it would not happen a third time. Even back in those days we had ‘three strikes and you were out’. At least there was breathing space for ALL to learn from the experience and take the appropriate action to rectify the situation or review the objectives.

So what makes us so different in the UK? My experience in working with many companies in the UK is that there is no room for not achieving objectives first time round. ‘If you said you would achieve it then you should do. No excuses!’ Let me ask, what happens when you are trying to get to a customer and there has been an accident. You have various alternatives. You can call the customer and see if he will wait until you can get there, reschedule, or find an alternative route.

Why don’t we use the same approach in business? The road could be straight but on the other hand it could twist and turn and there could be many hazards. The winner is the one that wants to get there and will not be scared to take the necessary action by monitoring the situation on an ongoing basis.

Is Fear A Good Motivational Tool For The Sales Force?

Thu, 14 Jun 2007 11:25:00 GMT

After watching the final of The Apprentice yesterday, it occurred to me that there is still a prevalent method of managing sales in a climate of fear, and why not? If I was dealing with millions and my boss was Alan Sugar then I perhaps would feel the need to fear my every move as well. Fear is a good thing, it prevents us from overextending. It is nature’s way of telling us we are in a place we shouldn’t be. So, isn’t it in theory a great way of managing a person or department? By laying fear, isn’t it both a motivation and also a way to lay a limit on those under you so that you have what is most important; control.

Working on marketing material for SalesVision, our methodology is in direct contrast with this. I won’t go into this here, but reading George’s article Coaching and Mentoring: An Alternative to Draconian Slave Driving should put you in the picture. To add my two pennies worth, the idea that you have control if you instill fear into someone is an outdated form of sales management. I have worked with management in various sectors who have used this method of managing their teams, and the conclusion is that the ‘control’ they have is purely fictitious.

Control in a business environment is the ability to know information, and by information, I mean uncorrupted data. Quite simply control is knowing the truth about your business. Fear in the equation of knowing this information corrupts the flow of information. The Apprentice as a TV format highlights this fact quite easily. If you put a group of people together and give them not only a competitive environment but the fear of ‘failure’ and a weekly firing they will do anything to avoid it including fabricating, diluting, prevaricating and distracting from the truth.

Dont you just love spreadsheets? Part 4 The Finale

Tue, 12 Jun 2007 18:51:00 GMT

So James glibly inflated his forecasts, puffing the unlikely ones into likely and if necessary, inventing one or two sales to come which hadn’t a snowball in hell’s chance of materialising. After all, if 50% of his sales target was projected to arrive in 5 months time with a probability of 75%, management would surely take the long view. Wouldn’t they? That the 75% figure never changed, despite the fact that the close date arrived, didn’t set off any alarm bells, was a failure on the part of the management.

But what else would you expect. Apart from spending a long week every month to pull together a report and a forecast, they were expected to keep abreast of the realism (or otherwise) of about 1500 sales opportunities, forecast by 15 different people spanning the next 6 to 9 months. I put my hands up – we the management didn’t stand a chance, so we managed largely on out of date activity, yesterdays accounts and continued to push the work of fiction we called a forecast around the boardroom Table as though it was an article of truth.

So when the personal PC and spreadsheet (Remember Lotus 123?) arrived, its ability to replace the rather large sheets of paper with their columns of months and their rows for sales people or products and their entries of pounds and percentages, it appeared to offer something of an answer to all our problems. Actually, it proved to be one of the best self inflicted problems we’d ever created in sales. Because the figures now went into a computer and came out of a computer, they were bound to be right!

And now we have another discussion, but I'll leave that for another day...

Dont you just love spreadsheets? Part 3

Mon, 11 Jun 2007 11:54:00 GMT

In my first entries on spreadsheets I stated how invaluable spreadsheets are in the work place and the work involved in getting the work force mandated to achieve a collective stream of data for a company's forecast.

It actually worked rather well, except for the accuracy of the forecast or its timing or the product mix it contained. That apart, if the sales people were prepared to spend an hour every evening on top of a long day and the management were prepared to do a week of 12 hour days at reporting time each month, we assembled useful, if out of date activity data. We also assembled useful forecast data because the sales managers knew their sales people and they knew that Charlie was always about 50% optimistic but late in delivering and that David was always about 40% pessimistic but early in closing, so the forecasts could be “Adjusted”.

Harry, who was always 10% over target was always bang on, but then he was never late for an appointment (Had he a sixth sense about the traffic in the mornings or did he just set off half an hour early and have breakfast on arrival?) His reports were always on time, his demonstration kit in order and he sailed serenely through the economic ups and downs of the economy without missing a beat. He took his 5 weeks holiday every year and was rarely rattled by anything which went on. We usually ruined Harry by promoting him to a management position which he coveted, but didn’t necessarily want, where he tried and failed to make sales people work to the same successful strict formula which drove him.

You see, Harry was self organised as well as being good at his job. His diary would be carefully filled with reminders to do something alongside his appointments and meetings. His records would be colour coded with removable stickers for next actions. His reports would be summarised for his own purposes so that he knew what he’d done and knew what he was going to do. His forecast conned no one – himself in particular. But Harry could always afford to do this, because he was always 10% over target. Most sales people can’t afford to do that because it would involve forecasting their own demise. You can probably hear it as a sweat inducing echo you’re your memory, even now “James has an attitude problem. This is the third month in a row that he’s forecast a below target performance” of course, Management did sod all about it, because they probably didn’t know why he was failing and honesty was no reward for being the bearer of bad news.

continues tomorrow...

The Changing Face of Working With the Internet

Thu, 07 Jun 2007 10:33:00 GMT

Not sure if this piece says more about me or more about the internet and all the facilities a user has at his/her disposal since the invention of it.

This morning I came in early with the aim of getting certain, more mundane elements of my job out of the way, before anybody else got in and distracted me (notice that is their fault… although if I am honest when it comes to the tasks that are before me, I am easily distracted: hence this blog entry). The stimulation for this entry is that having got into the office I did my obligatory checks on my various ‘favourite’ websites to see if there was any news and I then set about checking other more ‘entertaining’ sites.

The internet has mutated; due to demand and ever altering boundaries people can now LEGALLY watch episodes of their favourite soap, or maybe a movie online etc etc; at a click of a button things a readily accessible. Furthermore, your average billboard website has changed too; out with the online brochure, in with the interactive all singing, all dancing playground (perhaps a bit of an exaggeration).

For years as a web designer I would spend time with clients trying to find an angle to give to their website in order to add ‘sticky content’, pretty much condoning the distraction of the user (in a positive way of course); content that would give a user a reason to want to return to their site. Now we have sites which are pure ‘sticky content’… forums, blogs, chat rooms, interactivity etc. Although corny and coined by several television programmes, if you want to find out about someone, you wouldn’t go far wrong by tapping in their name into one of the big search engines; people are now spending more and more time on the internet, occasionally leaving their ‘calling card’.

However, what impact is this having on society. Furthermore, what impactdoes this have on quality and quantity of work? If I am honest with myself I would say that as the internet mutates my level of productivity does too; there is an ever greater need to become more and more disciplined and not to waver from the tasks that are at hand. We live in a society that craves entertainment and stimulation and ifwork does notprovide us with that then we will go and look for it elsewhere.

Unique Selling Point, or should it be Unique Buying Point?

Wed, 06 Jun 2007 13:42:00 GMT

What is the first thing you hear when a new product is launched or a new sales person joins the team. What is the unique selling point for product A?

Off we go to the marketing department requesting that they carry out a survey, check it against competitor offerings and yes develop a matrix. For whom? The sales person of course so he can tell the customer what a wonderful product he has.

Stop a minute, we keep saying the customer will buy a product because it serves a given purpose, it solves a problem. So, would you say that the unique selling point is that it solves the customer’s problem?

So by all means, work on a matrix but make sure that it is focussed on the customer making the decision, i.e. what added value does your product bring to the business in solving his or her problems, and not on features that make your product stand out from the competition. Remember the electronic mouse trap?

The electronic mouse trap versus the traditional mouse trap! After all, the entire problem is to catch mice. So what value is added to the solution by using an electronic mouse trap? No if the issue was of disposal and the electronic mouse trap was connected to refuse collection and the process was automated so that no human intervention was required, this might be considered by many a person as it would reduce the personal health risk.

Go on develop your USP matrix. How many items in the matrix are product features? Now do it for the UBP. You do know your prospect’s buying cycle don’t you?

Why I do and dont agree with James Murray

Tue, 05 Jun 2007 09:47:00 GMT

James Murray’s article in this weeks IT Week talks about the perils of the web 2.0 revolution and what it means to business management. The premise of this article revolves around one main theme and I quote “the productivity gains of the web revolution are offset by hours wasted surfing”.

I will join in agreement with him in that I too am not the biggest fan of YouTube, MySpace, Facebook etc. and that 99.9% of what appears in these places is not worth describing as worthwhile or even entertainment. I will however point out that these popular sites don’t make up all or even a small percentage of the web 2.0 resources available. Yet, the argument here, I think is that because of these newer and faster methods of internet communication, and I quote again, “the lesser motivated members of any workforce” are tempted further to waste time in useless internet rambling. If this is the argument, I wholeheartedly agree.

However, we are in danger of that reminiscing sin of looking in the past with rose tinted glasses. I can still vaguely remember a time when computers and internet weren’t integral to a work environment and lesser motivated members of the workforce still could find any excuse to wander off and get distracted by any small thing. There has got to be a point when you have to consider that no matter what you do, motivationally to focus someone, barring locking them in a bare room, if they aren’t inclined to work for you then they won’t.

I am a great fan of the web 2.0 phenomenon and the networking barriers that it is in effect breaking down. As with most things in life, when good things come there are downsides and yes, greater access to the internet in the business environment will mean more surfing some of it a waste of time. However, this is a symptom, not the cause, and what companies should be worrying about is dedication and work ethic. If a business has a less motivated employee then why worry about the hours he spends surfing and worry more on why he is less motivated?

Application or Game Design?

Mon, 04 Jun 2007 10:49:00 GMT

As with any product, software or anything else, if it looks good it is a lot easier to sell. The initial barrier, attraction, is instantaneous overcome and then ‘all’ that you have to do is convince your customer that they can’t live without your offering.

Stage 1 complete the next step is to encourage the user to want to use it. From a development point of you this is where the headache begins. We are charged with delivering an application which performs certain functions. In the case of SalesVision it is to aid the process of Sales Performance Management (SPM). This is all well and good but the additional factor is that it has to be designed in such a way that people want to use it. This would be easily accomplished if everybody was the same; if everybody saw that it aided them with the job then our mission would be easy; even if people saw that it helps them to hit target and make their commission.

However, there is a different kind of user which is a ‘beast’ all of its own; the user that has to be kept ‘amused’ with slick graphics and game like functionality. People are not satisfied with a product that does a job. They want to be wowed into using it. Show someone a static graph they will say thank you very much. Show someone a graph which is animated, where the columns grow out of the x or y axis and they will sit there and play, clicking time and time again to ‘amuse’ themselves: in terms of website design this is called ‘sticky content’.

In today’s culture it is becoming more and more (perhaps a gross generalisation) apparent that to keep someone’s attention you have to entertain them.

Are British Managers Technologically Challenged?

Wed, 30 May 2007 13:03:00 GMT

In last Friday’s marketing meeting George asked me “Exactly who are we writing for with regards to the blog?”. I told him that most of our web statistics on SalesVision online show that most traffic comes from our blog and that over 60% of our readers are American.

He turned around and said to me “Why is this?”. This got me thinking, though by no means are we not averse to talking and conversing with our friends in the US, our immediate target market is upper management in British companies. My theory on this is that in the US, everyone, including business people are fairly comfortable with using, networking and marketing on the internet. The perception in this country is that there is still a proportion of management who still only use and consume conservative old methods of marketing and view the internet with suspicion.

Perhaps this is a wildly inaccurate stereotype and I would be happy to hear your views on this subject?

Dont you just love spreadsheets? Part 2 The Work Involved

Tue, 29 May 2007 10:38:00 GMT

In my first entry on this subject I was waxing lyrical on spreadsheets. This follows on from from what I wrote...

Of course, the sales team were also mandated to “Forecast” what they would sell from a sales appointment. On the same sheet there was a “forecast sales” box and in a comment box we were expected to give the date of the close of the sale and the products involved. So “Forecasting” involved pulling out all the figures, copying them into a larger sheet into an appropriate date column and then annotating the entry with the product. This meant that the management team of finance, purchasing, sales and manufacturing could have a glimpse of the future they were expected to make happen.

The amount of work involved in extracting the data was horrific, but if we wanted the company to be well managed by looking at measurable things and acting on the analysis we did the work. Salesmen would spend about an hour a day writing and assembling their reports. Then head office staff would spend about a day a week extracting the data and another day turning it into a form that could be used. Finally the management would analyse the data and talk about it for 2 hours before taking decisions which were critical to the wellbeing of the company and the continuation of several people’s careers.

OK, not so enthusiastic about spreadsheets as I was last week but I'm not finished here. I'll be continuing this further...

Dont you just love spreadsheets? - Part 1

Wed, 23 May 2007 13:00:00 GMT

Well, I have to admit that they are invaluable – I’ve even written one which solves Sudoku problems. The only problem there is that having access to it permanently ruins any enjoyment that you could get out of the game. I wish that I could say the same about using spreadsheets to do sales forecasting.

Initially, to this General Sales Manager, they looked like the answer to a prayer. Forward sales data was always hovering between difficult and impossible to deliver to the monthly management meeting and without it, accounts didn’t know what they had to finance, purchasing didn’t know what they had to buy and manufacturing didn’t know what they would be building.

Weekly, my PA would comb through 15 sets of sales reports and extract the data on the numbers of discussions and demonstrations our team had been doing and enter them onto a big sheet of paper. At the end of a month, I’d spend a day adding all the figures on four big sheets together to get a monthly picture and then analysing it for the meeting. Over 3 months, I got a trend.

That told me, very accurately what they had been up to. Admittedly by the time I had a picture of what the members of the team were up to, the data was four months old, so taking corrective action for sales people who were going a bit wonky tended to be of the “Leave me your car keys” type. The first indications of a problem were from the accounts system; usually a failure to hit target for a quarter, but anyone could have a poor quarter, so we’d have to take a couple of quarters into consideration.

Do I still love spreadsheets? More to follow soon…

Have you ever played text message tennis?

Tue, 15 May 2007 09:56:00 GMT

I can honestly say when I am responding to text messages from certain people, the session goes on longer than a rally in tennis. All I want to know, is it rude not to respond to the tenth reply text message? Do you pretend that you did not see the text?

This also goes on in business with emails. No sooner have you responded to the first email then you get a response. Do you respond immediately? Nothing has changed just because we are using electronic media. Time management and prioritising do not have to be sacrificed. We might be able to respond immediately, but is it the right thing to do sacrificing other activities that might be more important.

Disney and the power of marketing

Mon, 14 May 2007 15:50:00 GMT

Reading George’s last post, it is not difficult to sometimes question ones efforts especially when it comes to blogging. Does it have an affect? Is anyone reading this? And as the foremost pain in the neck when it comes to advocating the merits of blogging even I sometimes question what it all means.

My answer to this came a few days ago, when I was surfing blogs and I came across this article Flooring The Consumer: STORY Brings Brands To Life. This blog entry discusses a presentation attended by the author about Disney’s marketing methods and how they actively target and understand their audiences and create their products around that knowledge. I won’t go into details suffice to say that I found the style and depth of the article enough to keep me reading the entire article through to the end. It was interesting and informative and I certainly feel richer for reading it. More importantly, I think that most people who are sales and marketing driven would appreciate the lessons learning in this article.

However, what I take most from this article is, and I quote “The most critical driver of customer defection is a PERCEPTION of INDIFFERENCE”. It then occurs to me that in one of the most indifferent environments known as the internet web site, the blog is the perfect answer to generating understandings and perceptions other than a static web page. By blogging we aim to create the opposite of indifference, and that is why I will continue to be a pain in the neck and advocate it’s use.

What is the meaning of it all?

Fri, 11 May 2007 11:50:00 GMT

I have a mental blog, sorry mental block, when it comes to writing blog entries. Who am I writing to? about what? and why?

I am told that it does not need to be anything specific so why write it. Is this just to show that I am here, that I exist, or is their a deeper meaning?

I was brought up thinking that anything to do with a blog on a commercial web site should be relevant to that site, but looking around, this does not always seem to be the case.

So, what is the meaning of blog?

The Sales Process as a Sales Aid

Tue, 08 May 2007 12:28:00 GMT

One of the advantages of having a blueprint or flowchart of the sales process is that you can show the customer the sales process, using a simplified version if necessary. The customer can then be asked if changes to the process, in terms of steps, activities and timings are needed, to accommodate the needs of the customer and hence make it easier for the customer to buy.

This approach, of using the sales process as a sales aid, can help to identify others who will influence or be part of the decision making process and to gain early knowledge of potential barriers to buying.

It may be necessary to adapt the sales process more than once for a specific customer, as the customer’s needs may change during the sales process. This is more likely to be true if the customer is unfamiliar with the product or service that is being offered.

As a sales aid, tailoring the sales process to the specific needs of the customer can help to build a strong relationship with the customer and increase the likelihood of a successful sale.

The sales process is not just about getting to the close, ie getting the order, but also about fulfilment and support, so the blueprint should include the fulfilment and support activities, as well, as these may need to be adapted to the needs of the customer, in order to get the sale.

Today, many sales processes are configured to be efficient for the vendor. I predict that in the next few years, customers will be using systems that allow them to specify the sales process they wish to follow and only work with companies that are sufficiently flexible to work in that way, ie in ways that are effective for the buyer.

SalesVision Exchange Launched Today

Tue, 17 Apr 2007 11:00:00 GMT

Well, here it is, the cloth has been lifted on what the SalesVision development team have been working on for the past several months and what our esteemed Development manager alluded to a few posts ago. SalesVision Exchange has been released as an extended module to SalesVision, allowing integration with Microsoft Outlook.

By integrating with Outlook, SalesVision Exchange offers SalesVision users the ability to add further efficiency by doing everything that Outlook does in a SalesVision environment, BUT also offering SalesVision users the option of using Outlook information with SalesVision’s SPM management system. Big deal!! That’s what most CRM systems on the market do. Yes, I agree, and SalesVision Exchange is a step towards implementing needful CRM into SPM which isn’t at all widespread in sales systems. Most systems either make your sales force efficient (CRM) or focus on effectiveness (SPM), what most systems fail to do best, is focus on both.

We are quite excited by the possibilities that SalesVision Exchange will offer our customers and since the launch of SalesVision VI almost a year ago, our customers have been clamouring for us to add this functionality into our system. Well, here it is, and I am about to barricade the door, since most of our SalesVision users are going to be beating it down soon.

Writing Sales Articles does work!

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 13:21:00 GMT

I wrote an article a few weeks ago on ezinearticles called “A Successful Business Is Like A Successful Athlete”. I’ve heard for some time now about the power of writing for online readers and decided to take up the challenge, mostly out of curiosity than anything else.

Lo and behold, when I got in the office this morning I had a message to say that this article had been nominated as one of the top ten articles of the week on http://www.top10salesarticles.com/ and had been reviewed by Jonathan Farrington’s BlogTalkRadio podcast. I certainly didn’t expect this, but then I wasn’t at all sure of what to expect at all. If nothing else happens, I can say that my experiment with article writing is a success.

What lesson have I learnt from this? That sharing idea’s without any financial gain is not a wasted exercise. By promoting ideas and thoughts you are allowing your profile to be seen and recognised and also open up possibilities of meeting and networking with similar minded people. I have been pleasantly surprised by the whole exercise and I fully intend to write more when time permits.

SalesVisions new blog author Nicholas Coutts

Tue, 03 Apr 2007 11:56:00 GMT

If you read yesterdays blog entry then you are aware that the SalesVision blog has a new author. Nick Coutts may be familiar to some who have navigated the SalesVision online site and seen that Nick has written White Papers for us in the past. We are all proud that he has agreed to contribute on a regular basis to the blog and impart some of his everyday thoughts and knowledge.

Nick probably will kill me for talking about his prodigous CV but for those who don’t know him I think it is necessary. Sorry Nick.

Nicholas Coutts CV is impressive and to be honest, too long to mention here. For a detailed look at what kind of experience Nick has had, visit his biography page at http://www.nicholascoutts.com/. As an expert in Routes to market, business development, marketing and partner management, Nick is an advisor and associate to SalesVision.

Sales cycle v buying cycle

Mon, 02 Apr 2007 11:14:00 GMT

Sales people are always ready to sell, that’s their job. If the’re not, then time and money are being wasted. The customer is often not ready to buy, so fully understanding the customer’s buying cycle and where he is in the cycle is important to avoid wasting valuable sales time and alienating the customer.

The main questions to answer are: “What does the customer need to know and to feel to move to the next stage in the cycle” and “What can I do to assist?”

Hence it is not just activity, but the right activity is required. Often, the sales person can do nothing to assist the customer, but will be tempted into futile activity, either to prove to the sales manager that something is happening in the account, or to log activities in a sales management system.

How can managers tell from such a system if the activity is the right activity, at the right time? To be able to get to this level of performance, it is necessary to map the sales cycle onto the buying cycle.

Development vs Management; Who wins - you decide..

Wed, 28 Mar 2007 13:26:00 GMT

As the development department goes, people have this image of a group of people, all sporting last centuries latest thick rimmed glasses, sitting in a darkened room, staring at bright white light screens all displaying lines and lines of zeros and ones.

Well, sorry to shatter the illusion, but coding is no longer just lines of zeros and ones.

For the past couple of months/year, the hierarchy of Nomis have locked us in our room and hung a sign on the door saying Do Not Disturb; notice the omission of the word Please. We have been charged with a project which with all good intentions in the next couple of weeks/month, as long as the sign continues to hang on the door, and there are not too many disruptions, should be making a appearance at any good SalesVision Business Partner near you.

It is a project that, in our own way, has excited us, primarily due to the fact that it has been a change from the norm. It has certainly challenged us, as will be only too evident when it is finally completed and made available; it has stimulated, provoked and furthermore turned up the heat of many a discussion that has been held within the four walls of the development department, always Management Vs Development; I am reliably informed that this is no different wherever you go and that development may try, but will never succeed to influence the course a product may take (There's always a first time!!).

So here is to the nearing of the end of this phase of development, when finally all the thick rimmed glasses in the room will be allowed to clatter onto the desk surface (they are that thick I assure you they won't crack) and a sigh of relief can be breathed at least until the next phase of development replaces the current phase, tomorrow...

Stay tuned throughout April for more updates as to what has been occupying the development department...

Why do I keep hearing this from management?

Thu, 22 Mar 2007 17:53:00 GMT

I’ve done my bit, so why hasn’t it worked? I bought them a CRM/SFA system, I got it set up for them and I had them trained, and yet sales performance still hasn't improved! I spent all that money and I've waited and waited and nothing has changed

All good things come to those who wait but systems require more than just sitting back and waiting for results to improve.

YOU and only you can improve the sales performance of your organisation. A system can only assist in improving sales performance. You don't have the divine right to sales performance improvement just because you bought a system. You have to be dedicated and committed to getting it accepted by the organisation. YOU have to be disciplined in ensuring that not only is it used, but that the setup suits your current sales environment otherwise make changes.

It is not dissimilar to bringing up a child: it takes dedication and hard work in getting that child to adulthood.

This is not a rant out of the blue, but it is based on fact and personal experience. I see middle management and below trying to get systems to work with little or no input from senior managers. They do not use their authority to ensure that the system is implemented correctly but moan once they do not get the reports and results they would like. It is a strategic tool to your company. It is your 12th man. Take note and make sure that it is implemented correctly and used to the benefit of the organisation.

May The Sales Force Be With You!

Thu, 08 Mar 2007 10:09:00 GMT

Sales Performance Management over the years has come to mean a view of the sales process with regards to the sales pipeline. Knowing which products are selling and the quantities in which they are selling and who is selling them is really the niche in which SPM excels. Understanding the profile of your product lines is important, but what if you were to take a different perspective. What currently is the most important part of your business other than the products you sell? The people that sell them!

“Really? If a person is just plain lazy or bad at selling, it is obvious. If the sales person doesn’t reach quota then he is fired.Why do I need a piece of software to tell me that?”

Of course, we can all manage a sales force using this simple approach, but a person isn’t as simple as that. Think of it in these terms. The software that we use everyday is complex with multitudes of algorithms and equations to make our world easier. Categorising a person in just shades of black and white is doing your employees a disservice. They are even more complex.

In developing SalesVision, we have created a way to analyse and profile the sales people that sell your products. Knowing how well a sales person sells and the reasons why they do well is just as important as knowing which product sells the most. By measuring key factors over a given period a profile of the sales person in your sales environment is developed. This can help in highlighting areas of weakness and developing training and coaching to improve the sales person’s performance. We are in no ways a part of the blame industry and this tool is there to highlight positives in your sales force, and as I said already, any person can highlight bad employees. Knowing information about your good employees is just an enhancement to your Sales Performance Management portfolio.

To view “Fine Tuning Your Sales Force” download our free datasheet.

If You Only Knew The Power Of Crystal Reports

Wed, 28 Feb 2007 12:05:00 GMT

Business Objects’ Crystal Reports is one of the leading reporting tools in the workplace today. If you look at Maximizer Enterprise the CRM solution that Nomis provides, Crystal Reports is the report generator of choice in today’s thriving business community. This is not to say that any person can use and exploit the full capabilities that Crystal Reports offers. Believe me, there have been days when I wanted to shout and scream at the computer monitor when I haven’t been able to get Crystal to do exactly what I want.

SalesVision’s interaction with Crystal Reports makes generating your business report unique in gaining the full power that Crystal offers. In fact, in SalesVision version 6.5 we have enabled SQL views so that you can link to and create your own Crystal Reports much easier. We have developed a Crystal Reports training course that covers how to use these ‘Views’ to get your crucial business reports out of Crystal Reports. This course isn’t intended to cover any basic use, so an understanding of how Crystal Reports works is required. Needless to say, with SalesVision 6.5 I’m not shouting and screaming so much at the monitor any more.

One small step for sales, one giant leap for business kind - SalesVision version 6.5

Tue, 27 Feb 2007 10:28:00 GMT

Apologies for the long pause in posts, but the SalesVision team have been frantically putting the finishing touches to SalesVision version 6.5, and after many months of beating the staff black and blue, it is finally here. With the release of SalesVision 6.5, over 25 new added features and enhancements have been integrated to make the currently powerful Sales Performance Management (SPM) software even more useful in tracking, managing and optimising sales performance.

Enhancements to SalesVision now include a newly improved My Work Day so that you can easily view opportunities that have not been revised for a number of days or any critical deadlines that are coming up or have been missed. Also, views have been established for the SalesVision SQL Server database so that reports can be easily built using Crystal Reports. These are two of the enhancements to SalesVision we have been working on and they are now available within SalesVision 6.5.

A New Year of Business

Tue, 02 Jan 2007 15:51:00 GMT

OK, so strictly speaking for me this isn't a new year for my business since there is another six months until the champagne corks start popping and there is a magnificent firework display.

But as it’s the beginning of a New Year I can take time to look back on the old one and maybe make some New Year resolutions.

I am reluctant to make any New Year resolutions, at least personal ones, because come mid-January I will have broken most of them. Let’s face it, most resolutions are promises to cut down on excesses that we most often enjoy and because of the over-indulgence of the Christmas period are guilt ridden and therefore we try to cut them out. This doesn't necessarily mean that making New Year resolutions is not a good one.

The New Year is a time for reflection and planning. If we are realistic, then making resolutions is a positive act.

The New Year is the perfect time to look over the last year and take stock of where your business is strategically and to make plans and targets for where you want your business to go. Sound, logical and obvious advice, you might say, but you would be surprised how many businesses do not plan for the future or know what direction they are heading. Planning and charting your business is a worthwhile effort any time of the year but at the beginning of 2007 when most of us optimistically look forward to a new year free from any negatives from the last, it is an ideal opportunity to take that enthusiasm and optimism and put it into your business.

I wish you all a happy, prosperous and healthy New Year.

Are Unions Worthless?

Thu, 07 Dec 2006 17:13:00 GMT

In my many ramblings on the internet searching for useful and non-useful information alike, I came accross this thread in Aardvark business forum. The gist of the thread went on the lines of demanding the end of the 40 hour week in favour of 32 hour weeks etc.. If you are a reading this and you are a sales manager, then I'll allow some time for you to recover from your faint.

This is not really an opinion on proper working hours and whether a company has the right to require it's employees to work longer hours. Politically, that is a minefield. However, it did strike a chord with my hypothetical self in regards to time management. If as a business, you could make your business more efficient so much so, that you could in effect work a shorter week or work less hours in the day, would you? The answer would be no.

Competitive nature in the business environment means that 'making do' is never enough, shareholders must be satisfied, profits must be reached and previous years sales figures are targets that must be beaten. If your sales force make their daily sales target in the first hour of the day, do they get to go home? I think not, they have the rest of the day to add on to their success. Unfortunately, the luxury of that scenario is not open to many businesses, that is why sales force automation and time saving softwareis becoming such a popular business tool.

Are we heading for a 32 hour week? I think the sales manager can rest easy... for now....

SEO for SalesVision

Mon, 04 Dec 2006 10:49:00 GMT

Marketing and Search Engine Optimisation are similar tasks with the same goal; to get noticed by your intended audience. With Direct marketing you have to get into the psyche of your target audience and develop a rapport or need so that your product can gain interest which will subsequently lead to more prospects for your business. With Search Engine Optimisation the aim is the same, but the psyche of the target audience is different. A website should already be developed in a direct marketing way to attract the audience when they visit, however to optimise a site for SEO, the target audience is a machine; a robot; spider; crawler - just a program.

Put into google a search for SalesVision + CRM or SalesVision + Customer Relationship Management and I guaruntee you that we don't appear anywhere near the top 100 results... yet. But then, SalesVision isn't a CRM solution so why would we want to be found on that? Actually, we wouldn't mind being found on that, because SalesVision is a sales performance management software that is related to CRM and performs in similar ways. We just have bigger fish to fry at the moment. Ok, we aren't quite there with Sales performance Management either, but then SEO is a long process and forget what some people say, it is continuous... plus Google takes it's own merry little time ranking your website. If you search sales performance management in MSN we appear quite high up. Who would have thought it? MSN coming through for us.

The moral of the story. Understanding your target audience. MSN tends to like content specific web pages with relevant content and keywords. Google appears to value the age of the website and linking of the site as well as content. If you are creating a new website then Google isn't likely to be your friend for a while at least.

SEO for SalesVision is a continuous process and we have only been seriously optimising in the past few months, only time will tell whether we get any better search engine ranking, watch this space for more news....

Welcome to the SalesVision Blog

Thu, 30 Nov 2006 18:04:00 GMT

If you have read George's entry on spending innordinate amounts of time on sales forecasts then you already have an idea of what we are going to be talking about. Over the coming days, months and hopefully years we are going to be talking about the things that drive us nuts and the solutions that we have found in developing our product - SalesVision.

Yes, we are promoting our product in doing so, but we also want to highlight and discuss relevant problems and issues in the business industry that are relevant to small and big businesses alike. As webmaster for SalesVision online, I will endeavour to write about relevant internet marketing issues when they arise.

As Managing Director of SalesVision, George Petri will be regularly contributing articles and discussions with regards to our business and business in general. Our Associates will also contribute to the SalesVision blog and if you haven't already seen, they have already posted some in depth white papers.

Anyway, hope that you will find our blog interesting and valuable. I hope to speak to you all in the near future...

nesh

Are you spending an inordinate amount of time in producing accurate and realistic sales forecasts?

Wed, 29 Nov 2006 17:10:00 GMT

Why?

Is it because you are having to chase people to get their input so that you can consolidate all the data into one report?
Are you also having toexport the information from another system into Excel and then carry out any consolidation?
Now you have done that, how reliable is the information?Are you having todouble check the information by phone, email, meetings, etc. How long does that take?
Now you have done it with your sales team, do you have to go through a similar process to develop a credible and realistic report for the Board?

All this takes time, time away from selling for you, your sales team, and your colleagues.

I have knowna sales director with a team of ten sales executives take on average two to three man days per month to produce his sales forecast report. That means hewas not able to focus on sales for up totwo man months and so heonly had ten man months of effective selling per year. The knock-on effect for the sales executivewas not disimilar. Greater timewas taken between the sales executive and his manager to try and bring some credibility and accuracy intothe sales forecastbecause the sales executivehad a history of producing inaccurate, unrelaible forecasts.

Whatwas needed was a way of capturing the sales manager’s experience in identifying, analysing, and managing sales opportuntities and making that available to all of the sales team, if not throughout the company. The sales manager wanted to be a coach assisting the sales team in achieving their targets, and not a task master. This could only come about if more emphasiswas given on the sales process rather total focus on sales activity.

Enter the new generation of systems, sales performance managment systems.SalesVision is such a system focussing on the sales process, using the sales managers experience to maintain consistency and accuracy as to the progress being made in each sales opportunity and highlighting the potential issues that may arise.CRM systems focus onactivity with the analysis being based on thesales persons perspective as to how thing are progressing. There is the optimist, pessimist, even the realist. How do you get a consistent and accurate forecast with the minimum of time and effort?

To be continued……