this month’s contributors: dr. tony alessandra, jason ... · for sales enablement programs:...
TRANSCRIPT
THIS MONTH’S CONTRIBUTORS: DR. TONY ALESSANDRA, JASON JORDAN, KEVIN DAVIS, MAX CATES, JOHN SCHAEFER, PHIL KREINDLER, TIM RIESTERER, SCOTT TAPP, JAY MITCHELL& CHRISTIAN MAURER
FROM TOP SALES WORLD OCTOBER 2016
Jonathan Farrington interviews Tamara Schenk, ResearchDirector with CSO Insights and Jim Dickie, IndependentResearch Director.
T P SALES MAGAZINE
ALSO INSIDE: TSW announcesthe relaunch of the Top SalesHardtalk interview series
Getting SeriousAbout Sales ForceEnablement
TOP SALES MAGAZINE OCTOBER 20162
EffectivelyManaging YourTimeDr. TonyAlessandra
12Warning: Bad SalesManagement IsCosting YouMillions!Jason Jordan
1416
Sales ManagersMust EitherInnovate orStagnateMax Cates
18
Millennials: TheJobHoppingGenerationJohn Schaefer
22If You Don’tKnow, Don’tGuessPhil Kreindler
24
Is ChaYour AlwayApplicTim R
2
Does Your SalesTeam Know Howto Get Better?Kevin Davis
allengingCustomersyscable?
Riesterer
27How to UseVideo to Speedup Your SalesPipelineScott Tapp
3032
CollateralDamagesCreated byQuarter EndFrenzyChristian Maurer
34
ContentsOctober 2016
Editors: Jonathan Farrington [email protected] Richardson [email protected]: Bill Jeckells [email protected] by: Top Sales World A JF INITIATIVE
Getting Serious AboutSales Force EnablementJonathan Farrington interviewsTamara Schenk, ResearchDirector with CSO Insights andJim Dickie, IndependentResearch Director.PAGE 6
Featured Top Partner of the Month MembrainPAGE 36
Top Sales Article & Blog PostSeptember 2016PAGE 37
TOP SALES MAGAZINE
TOP SALES WORLD is Sponsored by
What’s In a Name?Jonathan Farrington PAGE 5
TOP SALES MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2016 3
ThePower ofProof: ClientValue Stories Jay Mitchell
Editorial
Tou should already know that they are one ofthe largest (if not the largest) sales and servicedevelopment and performance companies in
the world and the name change has been effected totake full advantage of the brand’s reputation andsignificant standing within the workplaceperformance industry.
This quote from Byron Matthews, President andCEO of Miller Heiman Group succinctly sums it up,“Miller Heiman has long been recognized as a marketleader, but we have completely reinvented ourselves byinfusing innovation and technology into every aspect ofour business. We are shifting our focus to helpingorganizations solve their major business challenges bydriving revenue growth though sales and servicesolutions, and that’s why we are making majorinvestments in innovation and technology to design anddeliver products for the modern learner.”
TSW has partnered with the company for morethan 3 years and I have personally observed fromclose quarters how they have continued to build onthe strong legacy of its heritage brands such asHuthwaite, AchieveGlobal, Channel Enablers,Impact Learning Systems and CSO Insights. What isalso mightily impressive is that it all adds up to acombined 150 years of experience, and allows themto enjoy a unique way of looking at organizationalchallenges. This combination brings together someof the most experienced consultants and experts inthe industry to deliver some of the most provensolutions in the market, such as SPIN SellingConversations, Strategic Selling, ProfessionalSellings Skills and Large Account ManagementProcess (LAMP), and introduce innovative offerings
targeted to the modern learner with more yet tocome this year. Stay tuned for more information.
Miller Heiman Group’s strong desire to pioneerand innovate has led to them creating the Be Readyservices and solutions, which are, without question,the most comprehensive offering on the markettoday, designed to transform businesses and driverevenue. The Be Ready platform enables customersto leverage the latest data, assess talent, and takeadvantage of consulting services and the latesttechnology to build and sustain a successful,customerfocused organization that drivesprofitable revenue and topline growth on a globalscale. And, sticking with the “what’s in a name”theme, they call it Be Ready because the solutionsare designed to help professionals be ready to sellmore and service better.
You really need to go and visit the new siteyourselves to discover the wealth – and I use thatword deliberately, because it really is rich insolutions, resources, services and most of allexperience, expertise and capability. Please followthis link.
Next month, Byron Mathews has agreed tooccupy the “interview hotseat” and I am reallylooking forward to having him share the next waveof exciting announcements and launches comingfrom Miller Heiman Group. You will not want tomiss November’s issue. n
To read more of Jonathan's articles, posts,white papers and thoughts visit his personal
site here. You can also follow himon LinkedIn here
What’s In a Name?
TOP SALES MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2016 5
“What’s in a name?” must be the most famous rhetorical question in literaryhistory. However, as you will no doubt have surmised, I am not going to bediscussing any of the Bard’s great work today but rather share somesignificant news about our principal sponsor, Miller Heiman Group –formerly, MHI Global, Inc.
JF: Tamara, may I begin by asking you to shareyour definition of “Sales Enablement?” TS: Yes, of course. At CSO Insights, we define salesforce enablement as a strategic, crossfunctionaldiscipline designed to increase sales results andproductivity by providing integrated content, trainingand coaching services for salespeople and frontlinesales managers along the entire customer’s journey,powered by technology.
JF: Why is sales enablement such a growingdiscipline? Is enablement now growing up?TS: B2B sales is in a period of transformation. Howto sell becomes more important than what to sell. Inthe age of the customer, old productcentered sellingformulas don’t work anymore. Modern selling is
about creating value at each stage of the customer’sjourney for all stakeholders to influence theirdecisions along their customer’s journey. Andsuccessful salespeople involve more stakeholders(5.8 on average) at the customer and also internallythan mediocre performers. Our data shows thesetransformational challenges. Quota attainment isdecreasing since 2012, from 63.0% down to 55.8%in 2016. But trying harder doesn’t work anymore.Instead, sales forces need smarter support. And thisis where sales force enablement comes into play,orchestrating all efforts across functions to equipsalespeople and their managers with the necessarytraining, content and coaching services in anintegrated and consistent way so that they can bemore successful in an everchanging world.
TOP SALES MAGAZINE OCTOBER 20166
Getting Serious AboutSales Force Enablement
Jonathan Farrington interviews Tamara Schenk, ResearchDirector with CSO Insights and Jim Dickie, IndependentResearch Director.
The Jonathan Farrington Interview
JD: An interesting trend the CSO Insights 2016 SalesEnablement Study found was where sales enablementfits within the organization structure. In 52.5% of thecases, the discipline reports to executive salesmanagement, another 25.3% of the time it reports tosales operations. So this is not being seen as amarketing, HR, or training responsibility; this is trulysomething linked directly to the sales organization.
While we are clearly seeing growing interest insales enablement, how companies implement thisdiscipline varies. The study found that 12.1% of theparticipants surveyed said that their companyviewed this as a series of oneoff projects, 39.4%said they had an informal vision of what salesenablement could or should be, and the remaining48.5% told us they had taken the time to define aformal vision for sales enablement’s role within theirorganization.
JF: That’s interesting; the organizational aspectunderlines enablement’s growingup. Now, whatare the major goals they are focusing on achieving?JD: Study participants reported two top objectivesfor sales enablement programs: increase not justsales efficiency and but sales effectiveness as well.But how to do that comes in a lot of flavors. Keyareas of focus the study surfaced were increasingnew account penetration, increasing sales to existingaccounts, optimizing cross and upsell, improvingmargins, minimizing customer churn, improve winrates of forecast deals.
The key to success is what you do after youprioritize the specific challenges your salesenablement organizations needs to address. Workneeds to be done to clearly define the causes ofsuboptimal performance so you can then craft acomprehensive sales transformation vision, which inturn can be broken into management steps so thatwe can engineer evolutionary change that doesn’toverwhelm the organization.
TS: All these various goals that enablement leadersare pursuing cannot be achieved all at once. Some of
the goals depend on an organization’s current stateof enablement maturity; others on an organization’scontext and priorities. But wherever you are on yourenablement journey, effective crossfunctionalcollaboration is always an essential key to success.And it’s not just marketing you have to collaboratewith. Instead, there are, for instance, salesmanagement, sales ops, product management, HR,L&D, and also IT. According to our data, 66.8% of theparticipants collaborate in an adhoc or informalmanner. Only 21.7% have a formal collaborationapproach. So, getting crossfunctional collaborationright leverages a huge productivity potential. Andthat requires to defining collaboration goals witheach other function. Setting up a collaborativeproduction process and defining the relevant rolesfor each enablement service (e.g., content types andtraining services) is a perquisite for productivity. Withother functions such as sales management or IT,collaboration should be formalized to ensureexecutive buyin, exchange, and structured decisionmaking.
JF: In the age of the customer, what’s the role ofthe customer’s journey in sales enablement?TS: As buying decisions are still made by customers,the entire customer’s journey has to be the maindesign point for sales force enablement. Aligningthe internal processes, namely the sales process, tothe customer’s journey is still a challenge for manyorganizations. There is still a group of 9.4% thatdoesn’t consider the customer’s journey at all.Another 35.2% reported an informal alignment.This adds up to 44.6% who have not purposefullyaligned their sales process to the customer’sjourney. Then, 55.4% reported having either aformal (27.7%) or dynamic (27.7%) alignment. Ourdata shows that the better the customer’s journeyalignment, the better the sales performance: winrates, for example, can be improved by 15%. Withno alignment at all, the win rate went down to40.5%, which is 14% worse than the study’saverage of 46.2%. But with a formal or dynamic
TOP SALES MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2016 7
alignment, the win rate improved significantly—upto 53%, which is an improvement of 15%. JD: Many companies seem to struggle withmapping the customer’s journey. That doesn’t needto be the case, because to really understand whatthat journey entails all we have to do is ask thecustomer. To do that, we have long been advocatesof doing buy cycle reviews.
This starts with taking a group of pastopportunities – wins, losses, and no decisions – andinterviewing the customer about what happenedfrom their side. What issues caused them toconsider doing something, who was assigned to theproject team, what tactics did they go through toassess alternatives solutions, how did the costjustify the investment, etc. You also want to knowwhat happened after they bought something andstarted using it.
We have outlined in detail a process for how toaccomplish this in our ebook, The CSO’s Guide toTransforming Sales, which anyone can download.
JF: Enablement services: What’s the state oftraining and content services and how do theyimpact performance?TS: Sales training is still the top enablement servicefor salespeople, followed by sales tools, processimprovements, onboarding, and content servicesthat are actually the foundation for almost everyother enablement service. For sales managers,enablement analytics and coaching are mostimportant. The quality of enablement servicesimpacts sales performance. Content quality, forexample, impacts quota attainment in two ways:Content that meets or exceeds expectations, drivesquota attainment up to 59.3%, which is animprovement of 6.3% compared to the study’saverage of 55.8%. Content that requires majorredesign or improvement impacts quota attainmentnegatively: 53.1%, which is a decline of 9.5%.
The same patterns apply for training. Trainingservices that meet or exceed expectations improvequota and revenue attainment and win rates in a
remarkable way. But if these services lack quality,the consequence is a negative impact onperformance. Examples for onboarding and socialselling with exact data are included in our 2016Sales Enablement Optimization Study.
JD: W. Edward Deming’s observation that “You canexpect what you inspect” has a lot of applicability totraining and content management services.Providing training and content to sales teams needsto followed up with analyzing how they areleveraging those skills and sales tools when they areactively selling.
Are salespeople really trying out new salestechniques with customers, or falling back to oldhabits? What content are they actively using whenengaging clients, and what materials are effectiveand which are not? And also, what content havesalespeople created themselves? How do we findthose materials, synthesize them into best practices,and share them across the sales force?
We need to put together the processes andtechnologies to get answers to these questions. Ifwe do, we can significantly increase the impact thatsales enablement has on performance, because wecan ensure the services are really being used.
JF: Enabling salespeople is not enough. Whatdoes sales manager enablement mean and what’sthe role of coaching?JD: Too often when we have discussions aroundenablement, the focus is on what salespeople needto be doing differently. That is only half theequation. Sales management needs to evolve aswell. If you have a Sales 2.0 sales force reporting toSales 1.0 managers, you are setting the stage forconflict.
We need to bring a whole new level of scienceto the art of sales management. The CSO Insights2016 Sales Enablement Optimization Study foundthat the average win rate of forecast deals is only46.2%. Think about that. The odds of winning on a“pass bet” at the craps tables in Las Vegas are
TOP SALES MAGAZINE OCTOBER 20168
The Jonathan Farrington Interview
49.3%. The forecast is created by salesmanagement, with input from their salespeople.Nothing gets into the forecast unless managementputs it there, and we are wrong more than half thetime! That is indicative of a broken, or at least suboptimal, coaching process. So optimizing salesmanagement performance needs to be part of thesales enablement charter from day one.
TS: I always recommend that companies enablesales managers first, based on my own experienceand our data. Investing in sales managers impacts,for instance, revenue attainment by 18.4%. And thespecific impact of developing the managers’coaching skills can improve, for instance, win ratesby 27.9% and quota attainment by 10.2%, if thecoaching approach is a dynamic one. Yes, thecoaching approach itself makes a huge difference.It’s still the biggest challenge that 47.5% of thestudy participants reported that coaching is left upto each manager. Such a random approach is notscalable and has no positive impact on performanceat all. The abovementioned results can only beachieved with a formal, or even better, a dynamicapproach. That means the coaching areas and thecoaching process have been defined andimplemented, and the sales managers are up tospeed and are required to use it. In a dynamicapproach, the coaching framework is connected tothe enablement framework to reinforce the initialenablement efforts and to drive adoption.
JF: Now, let’s look forward: What are your topthree recommendations?TS: My first recommendation is to create anenablement charter. With buyin from the seniorexecutives, such a charter is a very powerfulinternal selling tool for enablement leaders. Thecharter has to be based on a clear vision, mission,and purpose statement. It defines the enablementtarget groups, goals, strategies and activities to getthere. The provided enablement services and howto measure success also have to be defined.
Second, content and training services have to bealigned. It’s still a challenge, especially when salestraining and sales content services are created fromdifferent departments. In that case, enablementshould establish an alignment process to ensurethat the messaging is consistent. No contentwithout training. No training without content.
Third, social selling is an enablement issue.Marketing’s social strategy and the social sellingstrategy have to be aligned. And enablementservices involve more than training on how to useLinkedIn. Instead, social selling methods have to beintegrated into the sales process and powered bytechnology. And social selling requires shareablesocial content that salespeople can use to connectand engage with prospects and customers.
JD: You need to establish a sales culture thatembraces change. That means that the first sale youneed to make with any sales enablement initiative isan internal sale. Everyone who is going to beimpacted by the changes you are making to training,process, technology, coaching, etc., needs tounderstand what is happening and why.
Second, realize that that sales enablement is aninvestment, not an expense. If you take the time tofigure out the costofdoingnothing associatedwith sales ineffectiveness, in terms of low revenueattainment, poor margins, high customer churn, andso on, you will quickly find that the cost of fixingthese problems is orders of magnitude less thanletting them continue.
Finally, understand that sales enablement is onongoing journey of continuous improvement,versus a single event. Adapting to changes in themarketplace will require unending changes in howyou engage customers. n
Download your copy of the CSO Insights 2016Sales Enablement Optimization Study at
www.csoinsights.com
TOP SALES MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2016 9
NATIONAL SALESCONFERENCE 2016Thursday 6th October Ricoh Arena, Coventry
Sponsored by
LEARN proven sales techniques that achieve better results
DISCOVERnew or alternative products to increase sales
ENHANCEsales team’s performance with new skills
NETWORKwith sales experts and industry leaders
GAINexpert advice to maximise sales results
ALSO PRESENTING...
NATIONAL SALESEXHIBITION 2016
Showcasing the latest products, technologies and services to develop your sales force!
Buy 5 Tickets Receive the 6th FREE
E D U C AT E • M O T I VAT E • I N N O VAT E
TSW Readers Discount: Quote “TSW16” & save £50Book Today: www.sales-expo.co.uk
Time remains constant, but our perception of itchanges. When we focus on it, it slows down.When we turn our backs on it, it speeds up.
Our illusion makes us think it is something tangible.We arrange it, divide it up, and give some to ourfriends. Sometimes we feel it is precious, at othertimes we waste it. We give it the power to healwhen we say, "Time heals all wounds." It can also kill,as when we live stressful lives because we "neverhave enough time." On a daytoday basis, nothing isdefined and redefined in our minds as much as time.It's a wonder, we can still recognize it!
Herein lies our power. Because things are as weperceive them, we can choose to see time as amanageable commodity and live our lives accordingto that assumption. This is one of the secrets ofsuccessful people they work at shaping those thingsthat others think are uncontrollable.
Efficient Vs. Effective
In discussing time management, some people argue,"What we need to be is more efficient with our
time!" Other people claim, "Let's not worry so muchabout efficiency, let's be more effective!"
Efficiency means doing things right.Effectiveness means doing the right things. Workingefficiently is doing things with the least amount ofwasted effort.
Efficiency gets you from point A to point B via astraight line. Inefficiency goes in circles.Effectiveness means doing the things that yieldresults.
Many people, when learning about timemanagement, ask the question, "Which should Iwork on first, efficiency or effectiveness?" In theoryand practice, the best answer is to improve youreffectiveness first. It is much better to aim yoursights at the result than to worry about the process.Too often, we are bogged down in the means andlose sight of the end.
Eliminating Time Wasters
Time wasters come from the people around you aswell as from within yourself. Some time wasters areunavoidable, but reducible nonetheless. Identify themost frequent sources of time wasters in your day.As a means of comparison, I have included a list oftime wasters. Many researchers find the samehandful at the top of their lists, which indicates thatthey are problems common to all of us:
1. Scheduling less important work before moreimportant work.
2. Starting a job before thinking it through.3. Leaving jobs before they are completed.4. Doing things that can be delegated to another
person.
Time is nature's greatest "force." Nothing can stop it; nothing can alter it.Unlike the wind, it cannot be felt. Unlike the sun, it cannot be seen. Yet, of allnature's forces, time has the most profound effect on us.
TOP SALES MAGAZINE OCTOBER 201612
Effectively Managing Your Time
Dr. Tony Alessandra
5. Doing things that can be delegated to modernequipment.
6. Doing things that actually are not a part of yourreal job.
7. Keeping too many, too complicated, oroverlapping records.
8. Handling too wide a variety of duties.9. Failing to build barriers against interruptions.10. Allowing conferences and discussions to
wander.12. Conducting unnecessary meetings, visits, and/or
phone calls.12. Chasing trivial data after the main facts are in.13. Socializing at great length between tasks.
Setting Priorities
When setting your priorities, there are two famouslaws to remember. The first is Parkinson's Law. Itstates that work tends to expand to fill the timeallotted for its completion. Parkinson's Law makessetting priorities twice as important. If you do notknow what your priorities are, your other work willexpand to fill in the extra time. It will take longer foryou to accomplish less.
The second law of note is Pareto's Principle.Pareto's Principle, in this situation, states that 80percent of your results come from 20 percent ofyour efforts.
Another way to look at it is that 80 percent ofyour business comes from 20 percent of yourclients.
Using A "To Do" List
A list of "things to do" for each day and week is avaluable aid to managing your time. A "to do" listorganizes your thinking and planning onto one formin the least amount of time with the maximumamount of efficiency. Such a list is especially helpfulif it coincides with the record keeping you already dofor your company.
After a short time, you will find yourself handling
a greater volume of work without increasing yourstress. You will simply become more efficient.
As we mentioned before, Parkinson's Law statesthat work expands to fill the time allotted for it. Your"to do" list should, therefore, define a specificamount of time (if possible) for each activity. Thiswill keep work from "expanding."
Your activities should be listed in order ofpriority. Work on high priorities first. In listing theactivities, it is helpful to spell out the result as well asthe process.
Stating when, where, and what you are going todo increases your chances of doing it successfully.
As the day goes by, check off completedactivities and make any notes that seem relevant. Inthe evening, make out a new "to do" list for the nextday and include any activities you could notcomplete the day before. Always save your "to do"lists for future reference and evaluation.
Change Your Bad Habits
"Habit, my friend, is practice long pursued, that atthe last becomes the man himself" (Evenus, 5thcentury B.C.)
Managing your time efficiently and effectivelywill require some changes in your behavior andthinking. Those changes require practice.
Giant strides, when looked at closely, are madeup of many small steps. In "overhauling" yourmanagement of time, you, too, need to take smallsteps. Start today doing those things that will makeyou a better manager of your time. After you haveimproved in one area, choose another and so on.
How about taking a moment, right now, to list theideas you would like to implement? Review this blogand jot down the items of most immediate value toyou. Then put them on tomorrow's "to do" list foraction. Remember this: If it is not affecting youractions, it is doubtful you believe it. n
Dr. Tony Alessandra is a bestsellingauthor and international speaker. More here
TOP SALES MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2016 13
TOP SALES MAGAZINE OCTOBER 201614
But what if you also have a group of lowperforming managers on your team? What ifmany of your salespeople are not getting the
clear direction and coaching they need? What ifentire regions of your sales force areunderperforming due to a lack of effectiveleadership? If you could quantify the impact of badsales management, how much do you think it’scosting your company?
$3.5 Million… At Least
Recent research by Vantage Point reveals that thecost of poor sales management is enormous. In astudy of 518 sales managers across a dozen globalsales forces, we found that the top 25% of managersachieved an average of 115% of their team’s revenuetargets. Meanwhile, the bottom 25% performed at76% of their goals. In other words, lowperformingsales managers underachieved their topperformingpeers by a whopping 39% in revenue attainment.
To quantify the financial impact of thisunderperformance, we further observed that themanagers had an average of 9.1 salespeoplereporting to them. If we assume an annual quota of$1 million for each sales rep, this yields a gap in salesmanager performance of $3.5 million per manager.When you consider the total number of salesmanagers across these organizations, the realopportunity costs of poor sales managers isstaggering.
But the more important question is: How much isbad sales management costing you? To assess yourown revenue shortfall per manager, simply multiply
Most executives todayacknowledge that greatsales managers are criticalto a productive sales force.With great sales managers,
you get effective coaching, healthypipelines, motivated sellers, accurateforecasts, and aggressive revenue growth.In short, if you’re lucky enough to have asales team full of great managers, life ispretty good.
Warning: Bad Sales Management Is Costing You Millions!
TOP SALES MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2016 15
Jason Jordan
the performance gap between your top and bottomperforming managers by the number of repsreporting to them and the average quota for theirreps. One company we know calculated their lostrevenue to be more than $10 million per manager. Itwas an eyeopening (and sobering) realization, but itwas also just basic math.
How to Get that Money Back
The good news is that there is legitimate hope foryour managers at the lower end of your performancescale. Additional research we conducted with theSales Management Association demonstrated theremarkable impact you can make on salesperformance when you invest in your salesmanagers. In fact, the research revealed a prettyamazing insight about the leverage of salesmanagement training.
We asked 161 businesstobusiness companiesabout the relative investments they were making intraining their sales managers versus training theirfrontline salespeople. More specifically, we askedthem what percentage of their total sales trainingbudgets were allocated to their managers versustheir sellers. We then correlated their answers withtheir companies’ actual performance against revenuegoals. And what was the amazing insight? The morecompanies invested in their sales managers, the morethey exceeded their revenue goals.
Companies that invested the least in salesmanagement training – less than 25% of their overallbudgets – just barely exceeded their revenue targetsfor the year. Companies that allocated between 26% 50% of their sales training budgets towardmanagement exceeded their revenue targets by 6%.And companies that steered more than 50% of theiroverall budgets to sales management training surgedpast their goals by more than 15%.
Interestingly, only 18% of the companies couldmuster the nerve to invest more in their managersthan their salespeople, but the results wereunmistakable. The 18% that spent more money
training their managers grew substantially faster thantheir peers who instead focused on their sellers. Itappears that when you invest in sales managers, yourmoney comes back to you many times over.
The Takeaways for Leadership
There are two key takeaways for senior leadership.First, sales managers are the key point of leverage inyour sales force – both positive and negative. Whenyou have lowperforming sales managers in yourranks, each one costs you millions of dollars in lostrevenue. Your actual cost depends on how bad theyare, how many salespeople they affect, and how bigyour quotas happen to be. But our research suggeststhat most large sales forces are missing out on tens ofmillions of dollars in revenue by enduring poormanagement.
Fortunately, the second takeaway is moreinspiring… Sales managers also represent thegreatest opportunity for improvement. When youinvest heavily in your sales managers, you get bigreturns for your effort. Remarkably, it has been ourexperience that most sales managers are starved fortraining on how to do their jobs better. When theyfinally receive it, they love it. And they use it. And ourresearch shows that it makes a huge difference in theperformance of their teams.
So somewhere in your sales force, you havemillions of dollars in lost revenue that’s hiding in plainsight. Your sales managers hold the keys torecovering that revenue, but you will only realize it ifyou invest in training them to do their jobs better.Once you make the commitment to develop yourmanagers, you will surely discover healthier pipelines,more accurate forecasts, and greater revenuegrowth. If you want to have a truly outstanding salesforce, then you need to build a team of trulyoutstanding sales managers. n
Jason Jordan is a founding partner of VantagePoint Performance. Find out more here
One person who knew a lot about winningwas famed college basketball coach JohnWooden. Coach Wooden and his historic
UCLA dynasty won 10 NCAA championships in 12years, including 88 straight games! Wooden oncesaid, “Competitiveness must be focused exclusivelyon the process of what you are doing rather than theresult of that effort.” When coaching, Wooden wasfocused on the total effort of his players – heconstantly urged them to strive for the selfsatisfaction that always comes from knowing you did
best you could do to become the best you arecapable of.
Winning is the result of excellence, not the otherway around. Too often we recognize and rewardonly outcomes and in the process miss out on theopportunity right under our noses to help oursalespeople become truly excellent.
What we discussed in the webinar with salesmanagers was the irony that paying too muchattention to end results makes it harder for amanager to improve those results. You cannot helpyour team improve if all you know is the final score.You don’t know what decisions they made along theway, what actions they took or didn’t take that led tothe poor outcomes, what skills they did well andwhat skills need work.
Yet too many sales managers, perhaps feeling thetime and quota pressure, believe that monitoring theweekly, monthly, or quarterly numbers is enough tohelp them manage their team. They think thathelping reps close an impending deal is the best useof their time.
During a recent webinar forsales managers that Idelivered, nearly half (46%)of the 150+ participantssaid that they struggle with
focusing too much on results. Sounds odd,doesn’t it, for managers to think they areover-focused on results? Not really.
TOP SALES MAGAZINE OCTOBER 201616
Does Your Sales Team Know How to Get Better?
Kevin Davis
Research done by the Sales ManagementAssociation and CSO Insights very clearlycontradicts these beliefs. The strongest link to highrevenue growth was among organizations wheresales managers spent a lot of time “identifying skilldeficiencies” and presumably correcting thosedeficiencies. In other words, they made time fordeveloping the skills of their reps, and didn’t just lookat the numbers that reflected behaviors long past.They didn’t focus just on closing the deals that werealready in the pipeline; they focused on developingskills that would help reps not just in the shorttermbut in the longterm.
When you work on developing rep skills, you’reimproving the input side of the results equation.Their attitude – and commitment to you and yourcompany – get better too.
There’s a famous saying that you can’t managetime, you can only manage yourself. Somethingsimilar applies here: You can’t directly manageresults. You can only manage the processes andskills that reps use to produce those results.
Coach Wooden believed that the “final score” isnot the final score. Instead, Wooden believed thathis final score as a coach was how effectively heprepared the team to execute near their ownindividual capability of performance. To Wooden, itwas about maximizing the performance of eachperson on the team. That was his final score. Whatwill yours be? n
Kevin Davis is the president of TopLineLeadership Inc. FInd out more here
The VIP Area provides free access to the Sales eLibrary, offering avast array of articles, eBooks, white papers, webinars, videos,books and so much more, all submitted by the world’s leading salesexperts and refreshed daily. It also houses the Top Sales Academyand is home to the Top Sales Magazine archive.
The eagerly anticipated TSW VIP Area hasnow been formally launched...
More Details Here
TOP SALES MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2016 17
Sales innovation – such as new product andpricing applications, improved salestechniques and other best practices – is
difficult if the manager takes full responsibility forinnovating; in fact that’s more than a fulltime job.However, chances are you already have an ongoingsource of sales innovation at work today – that isyour reps who are natural sales innovators, alsocalled sales intrapreneurs.
“They do whatever it takes, acceptingresponsibility for results, for their customers and fortheir company,” says Jack Malcolm, author and salesconsultant who has studied sales intrapreneurs.“They think like owners of the business and ownersof the relationship.”
While countless corporations are spendingmillions of dollars and manhours to create a cultureof innovation, many sales people, unheralded and
Like the shark who has to constantly move forward to breathe, salesmanagers can’t afford to stand still. With demanding customers, advancingtechnology and increasing competition, you’re either gaining ground orlosing it. There’s no such thing as the status quo. In other words, if you’renot innovating, you are stagnating.
TOP SALES MAGAZINE OCTOBER 201618
Sales Managers Must Either Innovate or Stagnate
Max Cates
unnoticed, are just doing it – routinely creatinginnovative solutions for customers to make the sale.All of these intrapreneurial actions are a part of asales person’s everyday life. It’s simply part of selling.The challenge for the sales manager is to nurtureintrapreneurs and leverage the innovations for thebenefit of the entire sales team.
Intrapreneurship, a concept originally developedby Gifford Pinchot III, encourages employees tohandle their jobs like their own business.“Intrapreneur is short for intracorporateentrepreneur. Within an organization, intrapreneurstake new ideas and turn them into profitable newrealities. Without empowered intrapreneurs,organizations don’t innovate. Yet manyorganizations waste their intrapreneurial talent…Management is blocking legitimate intrapreneurialzeal with bureaucratic quibbling or industrialage‘We know best’ attitudes,” says Pinchot in the bookIntrapreneuring in Action: A Handbook of BusinessInnovation.
A recent Time magazine article described anintrapreneurial program at General Electric whichhas developed something akin to an internal venturecapital firm that transforms employees’ pioneeringideas into new products and systems: “The result isthat production cycles for projects like new oildrilling equipment or LED lighting systems areshortening dramatically. An idea that once took twoyears to test might go from paper to production in45 days.” GE also has a web site where it postsproblems and offers payouts for solutions. In asimilar vein, Google reportedly encouragesemployees to spend 20% of their work hourscreating innovations.
How does this employeeinput concept translateto your sales people? Look at your sales force asthey are today. Many are intrapreneurs whetherthey know it or not. Customarily, sales people arecreating hundreds of best practices that gounrecognized and unshared. The manager’s job is toidentify, encourage, channel, nurture and sharethese innovations among the team. Make
intrapreneurial process improvements an integralcomponent of your sales culture. Go a step further:Expect them from your team; make it part of theirjob description. All improvements count, whether itbe a new sales pitch or product use or competitivepositioning.
Take care to balance the energy of your salesintrapreneurs – your sole proprietors, your lonemavericks – by using your team as the incubator forintrapreneurial zeal. The key is to allow individual’sautonomy while encouraging, magnifying andoptimizing their efforts through team collaborationand sharing.
For example, in sales meetings, go around thetable and ask for new and better ways your peopleare doing their jobs. Accept banality, celebrateingenuity. No matter how insignificant the ideas,encourage, encourage, encourage the interchangeof new concepts, improved processes andresourceful sales techniques. Catch people doingthe right thing – perhaps using a customer discountcreatively – then reward the rep on the spot andshare with the sales team. Also hasten your teammembers to cross pollinate their improvements witheach other, to share ideas formally and informally.Reward ideasharing with monetary awards,certificates of accomplishment, and congratulatorynotes from upper management. Establish an Idea ofthe Month Award culminating in an Idea of the YearAward as well as an Innovation Hall of Fame.
The result of your efforts is the message thatyour sales people are vital to the success of yourfirm, that you depend on their individual ingenuityand on their collective efforts to build a winningsales team. This, in turn, creates a sense ofownership on their part that builds loyalty, trust andaccountability. In this sense, collaboration creates amultiplier affect which significantly expands thepower of intrapreneurs. n
Max Cates is the author of Seven Steps toSuccess for Sales Managers. Find out more here
TOP SALES MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2016 19
If you’re looking for a great book on selling, youfound it. But don’t take my word for it. Thereviewers loved it! It makes selling easy again! –Jonathan Farrington.
The best thing about Baseline Selling is how easyit is to apply to your business. Verne Harnish,The Syndicated “Growth Guy” columnist, CEO ofGazelles, Inc., and author of “Mastering theRockefeller Habits” said “everything is actionable.”
Nearly every reader has said it will help themclose more business. Guy Kawasaki, author of“The Art of the Start,” said that “If you want tomake it rain you should buy this book.”
Here’s what another reader said: “We fell behindlast month for the first time. Every rep’snumbers got hit at the same time whichsuggested to me it was outside factors (leadquality, economy, etc.). As part of my strategy tosave the month, I re-read Baseline Selling, 30minutes at a time each night. By the time Ifinished the re-read on March 31st, we hadexceeded quota by 20%. The team is back ontrack. I thought you would appreciate the story.”Mark Roberge, HubSpot
What are you waiting for? Order your audio copy here TODAY!
Amazon Best Seller Now Available in Audio Version …“Baseline Selling” by Dave Kurlan
TOP SALES MAGAZINE OCTOBER 201622
Millennials: The Job-Hopping Generation
The data supports this. A recent Gallup reporton the millennial generation reveals that 21%of millennials say they've changed jobs within
the past year, which is more than three times thenumber of nonmillennials who report the same.Gallup estimates that millennial turnover costs theU.S. economy $30.5 billion annually.
Since many millennials don't plan on staying intheir jobs, it makes sense that they are hunting fornew positions. Gallup found that 60% of millennialssay they are open to a different job opportunity
15 percentage points higher than the percentage ofnonmillennial workers who say the same.Millennials are also the most willing to act on betteropportunities: 36% report that they will look for ajob with a different organization in the next 12months if the job market improves, compared with21% of nonmillennials who say the same.
Millennials' Engagement Lower Than That ofOther Generations
Why are millennials so likely to move around? Thereare many potential reasons, but one could be theirlow engagement in the workplace. Gallup hasfound that only 29% of millennials are engaged atwork, meaning only about three in 10 areemotionally and behaviorally connected to their joband company. Another 16% of millennials areactively disengaged, meaning they are more or lessout to do damage to their company. The majority ofmillennials (55%) are not engaged, leading all othergenerations in this category of worker engagement.
Not engaging millennial workers is a big miss fororganizations. The millennial workforce is
Millennials have areputation for job-hopping.Unattached toorganizations andinstitutions, people from
this generation -- born between 1980 and1996 -- are said to move freely fromcompany to company, more so than anyother generation.
John Schaefer
predominantly "checked out" not putting energyor passion into their jobs. They are indifferent aboutwork and show up just to put in their hours.
It's possible that many millennials actually don'twant to switch jobs, but their companies aren'tgiving them compelling reasons to stay. Whenmillennials see what appears to be a betteropportunity, they have every incentive to take it.While millennials can come across as wanting moreand more, the reality is that they just want a job thatfeels worthwhile and they will keep looking untilthey find it.
A Robust Recognition, Engagement andIncentive Strategy May Help
It’s said that many younger workers look at a jobmore like an investor than an employee. They wantto know what they are expected to contribute, whatthey can earn in return, how they will grow theircareer and what the organization is doing regardingsocial issues like carbon footprint and charitablegiving. This is very different than what BabyBoomers thought when 76 Million of themdescended onto the workforce in the 70’s and 80’s.
The good news is that while they enter withlimited engagement, Millennials are quite loyal andcan be engaged quickly if you understand theirmotivations. This leads to the reason for a balanced,comprehensive and inclusive approach to Awardsand Rewards.
The key is to engage leadership first and makesure they know what to do, as well as why it’s worthdoing … the “what’s in this for me?” component.When you begin with an enthusiastic, believablemanagement team, employees are more likely to seeyour program as genuine and worthy of trust. Whilethis seem logical and easy, you’d be surprised at howmany organizations have supervisors that are notproperly engaging their staff, as they are busyputting out fires and exercising crisis leadership.Training in “Why to Use Recognition” is all aboutreducing the number of fires, so your management
team has the time to recognition effectively,consistently and believably.
The Results Can Be Significant
Once trust is developed and your people arethinking, “… this company cares about me as aperson, not just a worker”, they will automatically bemore open to opportunities to help. By includingboth Right Brain, warm fuzzy Recognition with LeftBrain, logical Incentives, a company will be on theright path to growing sales, optimizing productivity,morale, teamwork and profit. At the same time, asuccessful Recognition Program can reduceturnover, recruiting costs, breakage and accidents,as well as lower the prevalence of equipmentdamage, theft, production mistakes and healthrelated costs. This can turn in to serious numbersand often pay for itself and more.
In today’s economy, poorly managed, entitlementprograms just won’t do and we are seeing a lot ofpeople seriously looking to make better use of theirrecognition budgets.
While it’s easy to toss around gift cards and cash,if your approach just looks like you’re “buying ‘emoff” or “throwing ‘em a bone” you will get minimalresults for the highest cost. The secret is in firstbuilding trust, then offering realistic, exciting and funopportunities to improve performance in a way thatallows them to share in the rewards of going theextra mile.
Every company can do this better, but it takes aserious and consistent focus from the top down. Asuccessful program must align with your company’sPurpose, Mission, Values and Goals … remember,these are what you’re Millennial employees arejudging you on, so they are the tools you need toengage and optimize your workforce. n
John Schaefer is America’s EmployeeRecognition Expert. Find out more here
TOP SALES MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2016 23
TOP SALES MAGAZINE OCTOBER 201624
If You Don’t Know, Don’t Guess
The Sales Person presents an Opportunity Planbut the meeting turns from a positive exercisedesigned to give the Sales Person ideas to
progress the sale into a negative interrogation aboutwhere the truth really lies.
Is this the fault of the Sales Person? Yes. But inmost cases management is also to blame for creatinga culture where Sales People feel that guessing isbetter than saying “I don’t know”.
What are Sales People guessing?
The same guesses turn up time after time. SalesPeople guess what the goals of the Buying Centerare and are too optimistic about the qualification
criteria, and their strengths vs. the competition.There is also a tendency to give a decision date sothat it matches the end of the quarter.
Let me draw a clear distinction here between aguess and an assumption. Sometimes we have tomake assumptions. But it is vital we do everything toverify every assumption as soon as possible. Whenyou go into an Opportunity Review everyassumption should be clearly flagged up and theaction should be to make sure the assumption isvalidated.
What’s so bad about guesswork?
Firstly, the opportunity you are working on is morelikely to fail if your Opportunity Plan is based onunreliable information or wishful thinking. Andforecasting becomes a game of roulette.
Secondly, and perhaps worse, the wholerelationship between the Sales Person and managercan deteriorate. Here is the scenario I see all toooften. The Sales Person and manager sit downhaving allotted an hour for the Opportunity PitStop(the term we use instead of Review). The manager
The biggest issue we seeacross the manyOpportunity Reviews we’reinvolved in each month isthe amount of guessworkand assuming that goes on.
Phil Kreindler
doubts some of the points in the Opportunity Plan,starts asking questions and uncovers that the SalesPerson has been guessing. Then the manager hasconcerns about everything in the plan so the wholePitStop is spent getting to the bottom of what isand is not true. As a result the Sales Person getsdefensive and demotivated, the manager isfrustrated and loses trust in the Sales Person. Nouseful actions come out of the Opportunity PitStop.
Why are Sales People guessing?
The biggest cause of the problem is a failure tounderstand the true purpose of an Opportunity PitStop. If everyone involved saw it as a way to helpthe Sales Person move the opportunity forward andto provide ideas to overcome any barriers, SalesPeople would stop guessing. Managers have a bigrole here in making sure the PitStop is positionedcorrectly and is a positive experience.
Of course in some cases Sales People havesimply failed to ask the right questions. They maylack the skills to ask the right questions or they mayhave failed to recruit and develop a Coach withwhom they can validate critical information. Theymay also have failed to work effectively withmembers of their own team who may have beenable to supply answers or ask good questions thatwould reveal key items of information.
How managers can remove the guesswork
Some things are down to the Sales Manager. Firstly,managers should be very clear that an OpportunityPitStop (or whatever you call it) is an opportunity towork together to develop the best possible strategyand action plan. This is something Sales Peopleshould value and look forward to but that onlyhappens if managers are positive and create acollaborative experience. Managers may need todevelop their own skills around asking coachingquestions in these meetings. For instance, a managercan encourage the team by asking a question that
reinforces a positive experience in a previousopportunity e.g. Do you remember the success youhad when…? What do you need to do to repeat thatsuccess this time around?
Managers also have to look carefully at thestrengths and weaknesses of their team and buildpersonal development plans where they see a need.
The most powerful tool in the sales tool kit –good questions
Sales People need to realise that being open andhonest is the way to get the best out of anOpportunity PitStop. This may require a more selfreflective mindset and better questioningtechniques.
It’s also good to build a playbook of questionsthat have worked well in the past. Every opportunitywill require some of the same basic information e.g.customer budget, decision making process, businessgoals and decision criteria so use the questions thatworked well in the past.
Better PitStops – better sales
All the organisations I see who run positiveOpportunity PitStops where Sales People don’tmake guesses and managers use the allotted time tobrainstorm creative ideas have one thing incommon. They win more sales. So if you don’t know– don’t guess.
Ask yourself
l Do your Sales People look forward toopportunity reviews?
l Do you find yourself guessing instead of sayingyou don’t know?
l Are your questioning skills as good as they couldbe? n
Phil Kreindler is the CEO and Founder ofInfoteam. Find out more by visiting here
TOP SALES MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2016 25
The Top Sales Hardtalk Series is Back!Hosted by the ebullient Barb Giamanco, expect fastpaced, relevant and
indepth conversations that are always on topic.
We will be releasing one recording for download every Wednesday. Here is October's timetable.
Wed 5th Dave KurlanWhy it’s So Difficult to Sell Value andWhy You Must Do it
Wed 12th Joanne BlackOne Call Meeting
Wed 19th Deb CalvertStop Selling and Start Leading
Wed 26th George BronténWhy Sales Process is Fundamental toReach Targets
More Details Soon at
When you’re the outsider looking to unseat acompetitor, a disruptive approach isindispensible for overcoming the status
quo bias. My company conducted research whichfound that introducing “unconsidered needs” tocreate uncertainty around a prospect’s status quo iseasily the best approach creating the urgency tochange and differentiating your offering.
But sometimes you are the insider, and you mightalready have a large installed base and spend a lot oftime and energy ensuring renewals. If that’s the case,maybe you’re wondering if your “why stay” messagingneeds be different than your “why change”messaging.
The “Why Stay” Test
These are not the sort of questions we like to answerwith hunches or educated guesses, so we createdanother test with Dr. Zakary Tormala, a socialpsychologist and expert in persuasion and social
influence. It was designed to compare variousmessaging approaches to renewal conversations, andthe results were pretty telling.
Turns out that getting current customers to renewrequires you to actually reinforce the causes of statusquo bias as opposed to new customer acquisitionapproaches, which must deliberately disrupt thosebiases.
It may sound obvious, but in this era of challengingcustomers, our latest research shows that using thissame aggressive approach on existing renewalcustomers will actually decrease their loyalty andincrease their willingness to shop and possibly switch.
Experiment Design
The online experiment involved 402 individuals whoat the outset of the study were instructed to imaginethey ran a small business and that two years ago theyhad signed up with a 401(k) provider to help promotetheir company’s retirement plan to employees. The
TOP SALES MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2016 27
Provocative messaging is huge right now when it comes to disrupting thestatus quo, creating the urgency to change, and getting companies tochoose you. Yet I often hear the following from people who work atcompanies that have significant market share: “What happens when you arethe status quo?”
Is Challenging Your CustomersAlways Applicable?
Tim Riesterer
hope was that getting more employees signed upwould boost employee satisfaction and retention.
Participants imagined that two years ago only 20%of their employees subscribed to the 401(k) plan.Their goal had been to increase participation to 80%.Now, two years later, participation had risen to 50%,which was a jump from 20% but short of the 80%target. Meanwhile, employee retention rates hadimproved, but it was difficult to know how much ofthat was attributable to promoting the 401(k) plan.
After being provided with this backgroundinformation, participants were told to imagine thatthey were trying to decide whether to renew andcontinue working with their existing provider. Whenparticipants clicked to continue to the next screen,they received a message—the pitch—from theirprovider. What they didn’t know is that they werebeing put into three different pitch examples.
The opening paragraph of the pitch was identicalfor all participants. But then each of the pitches variedin crucial ways:
In the status quo reinforcement messagecondition, participants received an encouragingdescription of how the plan was working to date andhow the company was making progress toward itsgoals. They then read an additional message designedto reinforce the causes of status quo bias,emphasizing how much effort went into selecting thecurrent provider in the first place and highlighting therisks and costs associated with changing providers atthis point.
In the second condition, the provocative pitch, themessage documented the results to date, butswitched gears and introduced a new idea thatchallenged their current approach. In this case, themessage noted that it can be harder to move from50% to 80% participation than it was to move from20% to 50% and that doing so might require differenttactics—in particular, switching the plan from an “optin” approach to an “opt out” approach that defaults allemployees into participating in the 401k plan. Theprovider would help make this change, which wouldpush the company toward achieving its goals.
Finally, in the provocative pitch with upsellcondition, the message was the same as theprovocative pitch just described, with the addition ofoffering a series of online tools for employees thatostensibly would increase their engagement inreaching their goals. But these new tools would add5% to 15% to overall program costs, with ananticipated payback in less than 12 months.
After hearing each message, participantsanswered a series of questions measuring theirreactions to the message and its persuasive impact.These questions focused on participants’ intention torenew, attitudes, likeliness to switch, and credibility.
The results?Across all of these crucial measures, the status
quo reinforcement messaging outperformed theprovocative and upsell messages by statisticallysignificant margins. A message that documentedsuccess and reinforced the status quo biasesrevealed a:
l 13% boost in intentions to renew, relative to thetwo provocative messages. To measure this,participants were asked how likely they would be torenew with their current provider and how likely itwas that they would stick with that provider.
l 9% boost in positive attitudes, compared to thetwo provocative messages. Participants hadsignificantly more favorable impressions of theprovider than in either of the messages thatchallenged the current approach with a new idea.
l 7% lift in credibility perceptions, relative to theprovocative conditions. Participants answered threequestions assessing how credible, trustworthy, andconfidenceinspiring the provider seemed to be.
Participants also answered three questions examiningswitching intentions, which sought to find out howlikely they would be to shop around for otheralternatives, switch companies, and try a newprovider. Again, there was a statistically significant
TOP SALES MAGAZINE OCTOBER 201628
Tim Riesterer
effect, but in this case it assumed the opposite form.The study found that participants in the provocativeconditions were 10% more likely to switch or shoparound than participants in the condition thatdocumented success and reinforced status quobiases.
These results strongly suggest that a great “whystay” message must reinforce the status quo byemphasizing its value and underscoring the challengesassociated with switching to an alternative.
Four Causes Of Status Quo Bias—And How ToReinforce Them
To help you build a better “why stay” renewalmessage, I offer this brief tutorial on the four causesof status quo bias and how to address them in yourstory:
1. Preference stability: Deliberately remindcustomers of the long, hard process they wentthrough to make their original decision to pick you.People naturally prefer to keep their previousdecisions/preferences stable.
2. Perceived cost of change: Walk them through thestartup costs required that have now been returnedthrough improved performance and are now sunk andfunctionally part of the ongoing operating budget.
People believe change costs more than staying thesame, so make sure you confirm that.
3. Anticipated regret and blame: Recall for them thetime and resources it’s taken to ramp up the solution,onboard all the people, manage the changes, and getthe implementation running as well as it is now.Making another change just reopens all thesepotential failure points they could get blamed for.
4. Selection difficulty: Willingly admit that most ofthe other solutions on the market provide similarcapabilities, that the offerings haven’t changed muchsince the original decision, and that you’ve kept themupdated throughout. People have a hard timechanging if they don’t think there’s much contrastbetween the alternatives.
As you can see, decision science principles matter asmuch to your “why stay” message for customers asthey do to your “why change” message for prospects.But, the forces you must exploit to defeat the statusquo are the same ones you must exploit—in reverse—to preserve it. What that means is that yourprovocative, challenging messaging approaches arenot universally applicable. n
Tim Riesterer is Chief Strategy Officer,Corporate Visions. Find out more here
TOP SALES MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2016 28
But with so much competition in themarketplace, it’s imperative for sales teams tomake an effort to stand out and make a
lasting impression.
Video to the Rescue
It’s no secret that video conferencing technologyhas made an impact on the modern workplace in thelast decade. The ability to connect with potentialclients across the country and internationally has
Sales professionals arealways looking for ways toconnect and engage withprospects and turn theminto true opportunities.
They’re also looking for ways to warm upleads that have long been left untouched.
TOP SALES MAGAZINE OCTOBER 201630
How to Use Video to Speed up Your Sales Pipeline
Scott Tapp
played an immense part in globalization of sales. Outside of video conferencing however, sales
acceleration technologies have also become acatalyst to the escalating sales revolution. Accordingto data generated by Live Hive, current investmentsin sales acceleration technologies are upwards of$1.2 billion.
Anyone who is familiar with a typical salesacceleration tool knows that datadriven insights,predictive analytics technology, integrated CRMsystems and automated emails are dominatingfeatures. And while these features may help thesales cycle run a little more smoothly, they don’tnecessarily help a sales rep stand out from thecrowd.
In order to improve the ability to generate thosetop of the funnel leads and move them quicklythrough the process, sales pros need a solution thathas more than just basic features to truly stand out.A pipeline acceleration tool that allows sales reps tocreate custom videos and pair them withpresentations or collateral gives sophisticated sellersanother way to break through the clutter and benoticed.
Not convinced that video can come to therescue? According to Aberdeen’s research,Analyzing the ROI of Video Marketing, 30 percent ofbestinclass companies who use video in their salestactics report a 14 percent shorter sales cycle, a 30percent higher year over year revenue increase andtwice the average deal size. It’s also worth notingthat by including a video in an introductory email, ithas been found that click through rates increase by96 percent.
Isn’t Video Creation a Budget Buster?
Video creation doesn’t have to involve a fullblownproduction team and doesn’t have to bust yourbudget, especially if you’ve already invested in atechnology tool to accelerate pipeline with video. Atypical explainer video produced by an agency cancost anywhere from $1,500 to $15,000. But,
creating a personalized video with a compellingmessage for a prospect with a sales acceleration toolthat already has video creation as a feature builtin?Free.
What’s even better is your sales reps won’t haveto rely on your IT team or additional resources tocreate, distribute and track the analytics of theircustom video creations either. Because they’ll beusing their own webcam, content and software,they’ll have the ability to control the message and beable to review the success of their messageinstantly.
Personalization is Key
Every sales rep knows that building solidrelationships with prospects is the first step in thesales cycle. But nurturing that relationship takesmore than just passing out business cards at an expoor shaking hands at a networking event. It takesgoing that extra mile and personalization is key.
With some video tools, sales reps have the abilityto create personalized presentations and pitcheswhile narrating them with video. This extra mile willnot only help get the reps foot in the door, but willalso likely impress a prospect enough to engage withinterest. In fact, 59 percent of senior executivesprefer watching video to reading text. And as themain decision makers, this group is inherentlyimportant to impress.
To me, these videos liken to how we feel aboutgetting a handwritten note through snail mail, itgoes above and beyond to show the effort andfocus a rep has for the prospect, furthering andstrengthening that relationship.
In short, using video can improve a sales team’sability to stand out and foster stronger relationships,which ultimately improves the ability to generateand nurture leads through the sales process morequickly—all without breaking the bank. n
Scott Tapp is EVP for Global Sales, Marketingand Field Operations at PGi. Find out more here
TOP SALES MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2016 31
Holger Schulze, group owner of the 50,000member B2B Technology MarketingCommunity on LinkedIn, surveyed their
audience and found customer testimonials andcase studies are considered the most effectivecontent marketing tactics, identified by 89% and88%, respectively.
What Makes an Engaging Client Value Story?
A powerful client story has all the ingredients a salesprofessional needs to prove to their customer thatthey can deliver on their promises:
l Big picture probleml Business, financial and personal pains for the
buyerl Solution highlights (with differentiators!)
l Demonstrable gainsl Compelling client quote validating the problem
was solvedl A story that resonates with the buying audience
While some of the elements above may be lacking(or absent) in too many case studies, the morealarming concern we see with companies around theworld is the void of client value stories altogether.
According to Forrester Research, 78% ofexecutive buyers claim salespeople do not haverelevant client examples or case studies to sharewith buyers.
All too often the sales team is begging for thisinvaluable salesready asset (or more of them), whilemarketing is unable to secure enough clientintroductions from the sales and service teams tocreate them. And so the neverending cycle offingerpointing continues.
Why are Client Value Stories so Important?
Client value stories are the ultimate proof point aprospect needs in their buying journey, and here arethree reasons that prove their importance:
1. Stories give buyers the sense of calm needed tostart navigating their current situation. Whenoverwhelming situations paralyze them from takingaction, a client story can get their thoughts focusedand doubts relieved — “Other organizations havebeen here as well and have successfully overcome.We can too…if we just get started.”
2. Stories give buyers a point of reference forinitiating trusted advisor engagement. We all knowprospects turn to their peers in troubling times, as84% of B2B businesses initiate the buying processwith a referral (Edelman Trust Barometer). A clientstory is the second best option in prospecting whena seller does not get introduced directly through a
I’m often asked what theNo. 1 sales-ready asset isthat marketing teams needto provide their saleschannels in a B2B sales
cycle. I never hesitate in my response: asolid client value story (case study). AndI’m not the only one who thinks this — theproof is in numbers:
TOP SALES MAGAZINE OCTOBER 201632
The Power of Proof: Client Value Stories
Jay Mitchell
referral. Seeing a trusted peer experience successcan give way to earned trust with the seller.
3. Stories give buyers confidence in justifying thedecision to themselves (emotion) and to theirbroader buying committee — boss, peers, etc.(logic). A study by Gartner revealed that 70% ofexecutive buyers agree “client stories and casestudies are the best way that providers cancommunicate differentiation that I trust.”
Client value stories are an opportunity formarketing and sales to unite in their joint gotomarket efforts. If you are a marketing leader, makeclient testimonials a priority on your team’s task list.If you are a sales leader, engage your marketingleadership in a dialogue about why client valuestories are a fundamental building block to revenueperformance. But do not stop there — fosterintroductions to some initial clients that can get themomentum going for your marketing partners.
How to Craft a Winning Story
Let’s start with the basics. We define a client valuestory as an ideal mechanism for demonstrating thevalue prospects can uniquely gain from your solution.
What is this “mechanism”?Our team has found the optimalway to organize and present aclient value story. The formatflows from left to right, showing acontrasted view of the pains theclient was experiencing beforeyour solution and the gains theclient is capturing with yoursolution. The “bridge” from thepains to gains is your solution andspecifically the differentiatorsthat only you can deliver. See theexample of one of our own clientvalue studies (right).
Let’s dig further into each ofthe essential pieces of the story:
l Your client’s PAINS are laid out on the left andare crafted to reengage the emotional fraughtyour buyer felt when they came to understandtheir pains.
l Your SOLUTION is the bridge in the middle thatyour client uses to alleviate their pains andemphasizes your differentiators.
l Your client’s GAINS are laid out on the right andconvey the outcomes and results being achievedwith your solution.
l Your client’s quote at the bottom articulates thePROOF.
Investing in the creation of these stories willproduce a great return. Clients are hungry for morethan your opinion — they need proof your solutionhas worked with credible clients.
I challenge you to craft one of these stories withyour team in the next week. Need help? Shoot us anemail at [email protected], and we can circleup with you to review where you are with yourclient value stories. n
TOP SALES MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2016 33
Jay Mitchell is the President & Founderat Mereo LLC. Find out more here
You hope that working even harder and usingall the tricks you know, how to close hesitantcustomers just at the finishing line, will work
again. If you think that this is your destiny and the price
you have to pay to be in sales, you need not read anyfurther. Should you be addicted to the adrenalinerush created by the quarter end frenzy, you will evenbe less motivated to continue reading this article. Ifyou are however in the unlucky position of nothaving made your number or you want to put an endof being considered insane by continuing doing thesame things and expecting different results, youmight find some food for thought here.
For a start, you need to change your mentalmodel of your task. Your task should not be to makethe number by whatever it takes. Instead focus yourattention how you make your number. Then you willsee that your behavior causes collateral damages.This insight is a prerequisite for changing your sellingbehavior. The list below is by no means complete, butit is a start to foster you thinking.
Possible collateral damages
1. If you grant last minute discounts, the customer’shabit to wait until the last moment to place theorder is reinforced as they hope to profit fromlast minute extra discounting
2. Every discount negatively impacts not only thebottom line but also your top line; meaning thenecessary number of deals to make the numberwill increase or the likelihood to miss the numberwill increase
3. With your discounting, a lower market price mightbe established inadvertently and more deals willneed to be closed to make the number in thefuture
4. A shortfall for next quarter’s funnel might havebeen created when deals that were planned toclose in next quarter were accelerated to makethe number for the current quarter
5. The visibility into the pipeline will be blurredbecause salespeople will try to hide deals thatmight cause leadership attention which will putpressure on closing deals for which the customeris not ready to buy
6. The capacity of the sales team might bestretched to make next quarter’s number tocover the shortfalls created in the next quarter’sfunnel and/or to bring in more deals tocompensate for the created lower market price
7. The workload of the sales leadership team might
When you will read thisarticle, you probably justhave let out a huge sigh ofrelief that you have, oncemore, made your numbers.
You might though also have the feelingthat every quarter it becomes a bit moredifficult to make the number.
TOP SALES MAGAZINE OCTOBER 201634
Collateral Damages Createdby Quarter End Frenzy
Christian Maurer
be stretched when the leadership team gotdirectly involved forcing to close deals withhesitating customers
8. The credibility of the sales person might betarnished by the intervention of the salesleadership team and customers might beconditioned to expect leadership involvementalso in the next deal and exacerbating the pointmade above
9. Investment in sales training is wasted if thetrainings were focused on increasing the focuson the customer value messaging to reducediscounting when in the end a shortfall iscompensated by last minute discounts to bring inthe deal
10. The customer loyalty might take a dip by havingforced a customer into premature buying andmore time and money will be needed to find newcustomers.
Looking at the list above, you can see that it isprobably not more difficult market conditions butyour own doing that sets off a negative spiral givingyou the impression of being in a hamster wheelturning faster and faster so making the number in thenext quarter is becoming ever more difficult.
How to avoid these collateral damages?
The ideas presented here are not new but theawareness of the collateral damages might help youadopting them easier.
The first idea is scrubbing your funnel, that iseliminate deals from your funnel which have a highprobability to create collateral damages. Intuitivelyyou might know which these deals are but you keptthem in the funnel to maintain the illusion that it is fatenough to make your number. Typical candidates aredeals:
l With too optimistic close datesl For which close dates had to be revise already
several times
l That are stuck for an extremely long time in thesame stage
l That are much bigger than the average size whichare thus attractive if they can be won but aredisastrous to still make your number if you losethem
l You run after too many small deals which exceedsyour working capacity to close them in therequired time frame.
Analyzing lost deals might give you further hints ofdeals to be eliminated from the funnel due to theirdanger to cause collateral damages.
Secondly, this scrubbing exercise also sharpensyour awareness that newly discovered potentialdeals showing early warning signs of creatingcollateral damages should not even be put in thefunnel at all. You will become more stringent onqualifying deals that you want to have in your funnel.
Becoming more conversant in articulating thevalue your product and service creates for thecustomer’s business is certainly a sustainable andlong term third way to avoid collateral damages.
The above recommendations might all lookcounterintuitive. Yet excellent sellers all have sleekerfunnels than average performers.
You are the master of your own destiny
Many sellers and even managers will only changetheir behavior if it is mandated from above. However,if you hope that you will be instructed from yousuperiors (especially executives) to avoid collateraldamages, you probably wait in wane. Most of themdo not understand the sales role. So they continue topush for the number to be made by whatever it takes.
Revenue can easily be measured but notmanaged. You can however manage the behaviorssuggested above and they will make “making thenumber” easier. Excellent sellers prove it every day. n
Find out more about Christian Maurer andThe Ultimate Sales Executive Resource here
TOP SALES MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2016 35
ACHIEVE CONSISTENT SALES PERFORMANCE
With the award-winning platform for complex sales
®MEMBRAIN
Top Sales Article & Blog Post
TOP SALES MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2016 37
Do you ever label people based upon yourexperience with them? That’s exactly what
this group of managers did, without realizing theconsequence of doing so.
It was the morning of the sales leadershipcoaching program I was delivering in Santiago, Chilefor one of the world’s largest global technologycompanies. After sharing a quick story, we began tomove around the room, where I gave each person anopportunity to share their expectations and whatthey hoped to learn from our two days together.Here’s a snapshot of what I commonly hear.
“Keith, I would really love to learn how to:
l Make my people more selfsufficient and
accountable.l Better handle tough or timely situations.l Turnaround underperformers more effectively.l Create deeper buyin and alignment around my
direct reports’ goals and vision of the company.l Motivate and empower people—especially during
challenging times.l Leverage our analytics and CRM better.l Assess when to coach and when to train or give
the answer.l Get the very best out of each person on my team
so that we can achieve our business objectives.
And finally, “Keith, what can I do about those peoplewho just don’t get it? Especially the...
This Month’s Top Sales ArticleEvolving or Devolving? How ManagersBrand their Team to Fail by Keith Rosen
The short answer is no. Yet B2B companiescontinue to try, often with disastrous results.
We somehow expect prospects to “get it” afterreading a single blog post. Or receiving a singleemail.
We expect prospects who showed the faintestinterest in our latest webinar to enthusiastically rushinto a deep, protracted demo.
We push prospects to move faster, often at ourspeed rather than theirs.
Just because we know and love our ownproducts, we expect prospects to drop everythingand develop that love as well.
There’s a reason we call it a buying journey and
not a buying event. It doesn’t happen at once.So the lesson for B2B sales & marketing
professionals is to respect the process.Be proactive about challenging the prospect’s
status quo and helping them understand the cost ofdoing (or not doing) something new. Be intentionalabout building value and building a relationship thatdifferentiates you from others.
But don’t ask individual acts of sales andmarketing to do more than they’re reasonably ableto achieve.
Each step in the journey moves the ball forward.Each step builds value, momentum, progresstowards the a result you both desire.
This Month’s Top Sales Blog PostCan you sell an enterprise solution in 800words? by Matt Heinz
Read More
Read More
TOP SALES MAGAZINE OCTOBER 201638
Our 2016 PartnersClick on our Sponsors to find out what they can do for you.
If you would like to learn more about the benefits of becoming a TSW sponsorand our existing Partner Program, please find details here.
Our Principal Sponsor is