Why managers make you plug data into your CRM system

Remember the reps' needs when implementing CRM/SFA

In their report series apparently inspired by the British children’s TV show Magic Roundabout, analysts at Gartner (pictured, left, in researching action) just released their Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation, 2007. I got a sneaky peak inside the full report and, aside from a good overview of the vendor situation, a couple of points grabbed my attention.

Firstly, “Gartner predicts that within three years the majority of new SFA deployments will be based on SaaS.” (SaaS – Software as a Service, delivered through the web, like SalesForce.com. SFA - Sales Force Automation, basically, what most of us call CRM). If you’re not using one now, you may soon be!

The most interesting point for me though was “Finally, we see a focus on simplicity as a theme to improve adoption among salespeople”. Adoption is still a problem? I’ve long had a theory about SFA systems :

• SFA systems are implemented primarily because of what they do for management (and what they do for management is impressive, important and useful – forecasting, overviews and near-infinite breakdowns of sales data, etc)
• The sales reps’ needs and viewpoint come second

We shouldn’t be surprised that adoption is low. SFA systems’ forecasting, overviews and breakdowns of sales data fit neatly into management’s world (it’s what they’re doing already), however SFA systems rarely fit the day to day life of a sales rep. To many reps it’s a disruption and the full extent of the benefits are not immediately clear.

“The system doesn’t map onto how I sell!”
“I’m a sales rep, not a techie – I’m buried in this “System”!”
“I’m spending all my time inputting data for management – who is this system really helping?”

It doesn’t have to be this way. Management can improve SFA adoption by:

• Balancing the needs of reps with the needs of management
• Ensuring the system maps the processes used by sales reps currently (if your reps are all using different processes, God help you, go back a stage and find yourself a suitable sales process/methodology.)
• Ensuring the sales department (at all levels) is involved in the implementation/design of the system
• Once your custom system is set up, train your reps in YOUR system, rather than generic training
• Be realistic in your expectation of reps. They will only gather so much data on behalf of management.
• Sell the benefits to your reps. Publicize examples of reps who have had results because of the system
• Last but definitely not least, three key points from Aaron Ross’s excellent “Sales Machine” blog :
• Executives must lead by example, from the CEO to the sales manager
• Make the system as easy to use as possible (backing up Gartner’s observation)
• Make compensation depend on usage of the system (I expect to get flamed for this one!)
  

Make (sales) history : here, NOW!

Change the dictionary definition of “Sell” – leave a comment, pass the word on

I’m passionate about the sales profession and I am ready to take action against anything that supports the negative stereotypes about sales people.

Take the following Concise Oxford English Dictionary definition of “sell” (edited to include just the directly relevant points) :

verb 1 hand over in exchange for money. 3 (of goods) attain sales. 6 persuade someone of the merits of.

Their definition barely touches on what selling as a profession – your profession - actually is. Consider the following;

1. hand over in exchange for money.

And

3. (of goods) attain sales.

Personally, selling high value B2B services with a very quick and easy handover of new customers to the account managers, this element of the definition describes what I do for about 0.05% of my time. It’s like defining “football” as “scoring goals”.

6 persuade someone of the merits of.

This is better, but only marginally! In sales methodology “SPIN Selling” 1 out of 4 stages and in “Solution Selling” only 2 out of 9 stages deal with active persuasion.

I would say that accurately reflects the amount of time I spend “persuading”. This is like defining “cooking” as “putting things in an oven” when in fact, the activity of cooking as it is commonly understood, involves much, much more, including planning, preparation and presentation. My question is; where in their definition are the following points and activities covered?

• Lead generation
• Prospecting
• Qualification
• Discovery, understanding and development of pains/problems
• Etc, etc

By focusing on the transaction and persuasion elements of sales, the Concise Oxford English Dictionary’s definition supports the stereotypes of pushy sales people. We deserve to have our difficult and varied job conveyed and understood correctly.

I have already contacted publishers Oxford University Press (OUP) about this but was not convinced by their answer that they fully understood the weaknesses of their definition.

So more needs to be done. We, together, will make a small part of sales history - we are going to change the dictionary definition of selling.

What you need to do to get involved:

• Leave a comment with your support as evidence to take to OUP (and your ideas for a more precise definition if you have any). Leaving a comment takes seconds and requires no registration.
• Important : Send an email to every sales person you know and give them the opportunity to do the same (see suggested text below)
• Add this post/blog to any bookmarking/social networking sites/services you use
  

When we have built our case I will take it to the offices of Oxford University Press get the definition changed on behalf of the readers of SalesItch.com.

Let’s do it – take 10 seconds to show your support and get your friends to do the same. It’s the best thing you’ll do all day. Here’s the copy’n’paste email text :

Hello all

I am making sales history by showing my support to change the dictionary definition of the verb to “sell”. It takes seconds: just go to www.SalesItch.com and read “Make (sales) history today”.

Thanks


Show your support here.

Good business = good sales

Sales philosophies and actions are at the core of good business itself

When I was at school I liked the idea of being a “businessman”, with high powered meetings, travelling around meeting influential people and striking deals. Aside from setting up your own business or running someone else’s, sales is the profession closest to that school boy’s dream. Ultimately, good sales and good business require many of the same perspectives and actions.

Consider the GetAbstract summary of the book “The Definitive Drucker”. Drucker has often been called “the Father of Modern Management”, but his teachings on how to be successful in business were remarkably similar to how to be successful in sales. Consider the following 7 points that summarise his advice to business leaders:

• Be customer centric - Customers belong at the centre of all business decisions. “The purpose of a business is to create and serve a customer.” Sales people find customers, discover and develop their issues/problems (create the customer) and then design and deliver a solution (serve the customer)
• Be selective - Decide who is your customer, and who is not your customer – Sales people decide on a target market and then carefully qualify each prospect, hand-picking the opportunities to spend time on.
• Identify and deliver value - What does your customer consider value? Possibly the ultimate question for the sales person to find the answer to.
• Be proactive… - “Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work” Sales is one of the most active disciplines in the modern business. As IBM's Thomas Watson said, "Nothing happens until someone sells something".
  
• … but “Don’t confuse motion with progress.” - It’s all about results.
• Ask the right questions – Ask probing questions to drill down to the essential issues.
• Look outside of your business – Strong business leaders focus on the outside world, where customers and competitors are. Just like sales do, day in, day out.

Drucker’s perspective should serve as a reminder to us all as sales professionals that we are at the core of the business.

Good business = good sales.

Sales Autopsy

Sales Horror Stories!

We all get it wrong sometimes. I've just come across the book Sales Autopsy which tells painful stories of sales people getting it really quite badly wrong. Try this one, for example. Ouch.

I've asked author Dan Seidman for a copy to review so hopefully we can dig deeper in blog posts to come!

Salesman eats own head!

Sales is no longer sales. It's marketing.

There’s been a lot of talk about cold calling being “dead” in the last year or so.

This undeniably populist movement proposes that prospecting is now about face to face networking, referrals, the use of blogs, writing articles and whitepapers, pod and video casts, a presence on social networking sites, and other ways to contribute value to and build credibility in your target market. Like cold calling, if done well, I am sure these methods are effective.

But amidst the clamour of excited sales reps glimpsing some light at the end of the cold calling tunnel, can I just quietly hold up my hand at the back of the room and say, “Errr, all that stuff, that’s not sales, that’s “marketing.” ”?

Well, so what if it is marketing? If it works, why not do it? What worries me is that Peter Drucker, heavy weight management guru once famously said, “The purpose of marketing is to make sales superfluous.”

See what I’m getting at? We’re doing it for them! Oh my God, we’re eating ourselves!!! We're going to be superfluous!

Bonus section!!! How to decide which prospecting methods to use :

• Think of a prospecting method (cold calling, blogging, etc)
• Try it
• If it works, keep doing it
• Repeat process until you have a number of methods of getting quality prospects

Remember you heard it here first ;-)

Take the (marketing) power back!

Use free web tools to create your own sales-focused marketing material

Until recently, if a sales person wanted to promote themselves, their products and their company through websites, leaflets, promotional or instructional videos/pictures he or she had to ask marketing to spend time and money (good luck!)

That's all changed now. Chris Baggot's email marketing blog thankfully goes a little off-subject to show how a sales rep is using web tools to take the power back from marketing.

To give basic information and provide a "feel" for his company and people, Kurt Vetters uses a free blog (you can set one up yourself in minutes).

He's even doing product demos and testimonials via YouTube with videos presumably recorded on a standard home digital camera - or maybe even a mobile phone.

You could do it. Today. Here's the original post on Chris' blog.

How to find email addresses - www.EmailPattern.com

List of email address formats for major companies

On her must-read blog, Selling to Big Companies the sharp-eyed Jill Konrath writes about a Wiki designed for B2B sales and marketing people to share email address formats of major companies. Search for a company name, get the email address format. It's that simple. And seriously useful.

I tried a few companies :

Could find... Microsoft, Ford, McDonalds, Nokia
Couldn't find... Experian, Accenture, IBM, Tesco, Kelloggs, Dell

It's in its early stages (so those companies might now show) and requires all of us (yes, that includes you) to contribute. Get over to www.EmailPattern.com and add a few companies! This could become a fantastic resource for all of us.

If you don't ask, you won't know!

To get past the first meeting, use questions to discover the right level of information to give a prospect

The mysteriously named Velvet Hammer over at sales recruitment blog The Hire Sense discusses a survey from CSO Insights, along with his own experience that suggests that many sales people aren't getting past the first meeting because, at the stage in the call when it is appropriate to talk about their products and services, the prospect expects more than basic product information (which they can find in numerous places, including the web). If the sales person does provide something new (or unknown), the prospect perceives that there has been no value added by the sales person and therefore sees no need to meet again.

I suspect that in most cases the sales person has plenty to talk about, given the chance. I hypothesize that the reason for this mismatch between what the prospect wants and what the sales person gives is that the sales person is often unaware of the prospect's knowledge level and therefore presents/discusses features that are below their level.

So, here are a list of simple, straight-forward and unsurprising questions to ask a prospect to ensure you hit the right level for them:

• I don't want to waste any of your time - can you give me an idea of how familiar you are with (product type), so that I don't cover old ground?
• What features are most interesting for you to hear about/see?
• In relation to the business issues we discussed earlier, what is it you'd most like to hear about/see demonstrated?
• When you walk away from this meeting, what is it you would like to know/have seen about (the product)?

And keep asking confirming questions to ensure that you are giving the right level of information :

• Is this (demo/meeting) covering the key points for you?
• Am I showing you the features you are interested in?
• Let me know if I'm not covering the stuff you'd like to see
• What else would you like to see?

These questions will be added to the Sales question bank.

Challenging the Solution Selling stages

Double your chances - target senior management

If you attribute any kind of ratings to the probability of your opportunities closing successfully, depending on where they are in the sales cycle, for example, “Pain admitted by sponsor – 25%”, then you have probably wondered whether these ratings actually mean anything or whether they are there to allow your manager to do all sorts of fancy projections for board meetings (come on, you wouldn’t really be so cynical would you?).

I decided to look into this, specifically in relation to Solution Selling’s assertion that an opportunity where the primary contact is with a Power Sponsor (someone with the power to make the decision and sign-off on the purchase) is twice as likely to result in a successful conclusion than an opportunity where the primary contact is with a Sponsor (someone involved in the sales process but without significant influence and sign-off power). Solution Selling rates the former with a 50% chance of a successful close and the latter with a 25% chance of a successful close.

So, I started tinkering around in the CRM system. In the past year’s pipeline, opportunities where the main contact was with Sponsors resulted in a successful close rate of 29%, whereas with Power Sponsors the rate was 60%. After hearty self congratulation for beating the textbook probability rates, I realised that, in this case, Solution Selling was right – contact with Power Sponsors is worth twice that of contact with Sponsors.

In light of this I have been concentrating on finding ways to improve my success rates in getting a Power Sponsor from the start of an opportunity (this includes various sales tools, qualification methods, simply not calling anyone but the Power Sponsor and just plain old fashioned insistence that I only speak to decision-makers).

In cases where access to the Power Sponsor is refused, I now have a set of tools and processes that help me quickly and efficiently deal with these lower-likelihood opportunities, thereby freeing up time to focus on the high likelihood Power Sponsor deals.

And the results? It’s too early to put into reliable figures, but suffice to say it’s looking good. As soon as I have some thing good to tell you, I’ll let you know. In the meantime please comment with your views and experiences.

Sales question bank

Here’s version one of the SalesItch sales question bank. The plan is to build this into the web’s most comprehensive, free list of categorised sales questions. Enjoy!

Wax lyrical like a CEO

Learn and stay up-to-date with business book abstracts

(BTW this is an independent recommendation. I have not and will not accept sponsorship/advertising/paid-for-plugs on SalesItch)

As sales people we have to know our prospects' businesses and industries. We have to understand their challenges and opportunities. That's a pretty hard thing to do, especially if you deal with a number of industries and/or functions.

I made a discovery recently that has helped me get a much wider understanding, particularly of management practices and trends. GetAbstract create abstracts of business books in Palm, PDF, Pocket PC, Simplified PDF (for BlackBerrys) and occasionally MP3. They are designed to cram the key points from business books into ten minutes. Considering that most business books pad themselves out so much, I think you get the most important points without the crap. Here's how they describe themselves :

"getAbstract is the world's largest provider of business book summaries. We make you the best-read, most expert player on the business scene today.

• getAbstract's library consists of 4,000 business book summaries.
• getAbstract produces 500 new business book summaries every year.
• getAbstract offers business book summaries from 300 different publishers.

It costs US$299 per year / US$179 per half-year, so it's not cheap. You can download sample PDF abstracts here. Check 'em out.

More sales questions!

Additions to the most popular post on SalesItch

More questions have been added to the SalesItch Question Bank. A big thanks to Derrick and Mike at The Hire Sense for their contributions to what I hope will become the biggest, best list of sales questions.

Don't forget to share your questions by leaving a comment.

Click here for the questions!!!

P.S. More categories, better organisation and more questions coming soon...

Business cards/ psychopathic murderers

Control card rage

Seth Godin makes a good point about business cards in this post :

"In an era where no one dresses up anymore, they give you a chance to position yourself, to represent who you are and what you do in a three cent piece of paper. And yet... almost all business cards are terrible."

True, but just be careful to avoid card rage (office-safe clip from American Psycho movie)!

Sales Dilemma No.1

What would you do in this situation?

There’s a story in sales job hunting folklore where the smugly smiling interviewer plucks out a pen from his jacket pocket and say, “Sell me this pen”. What would you say? Here are the options I came up with:

• Wind up the interview and walk out (on the basis that if you get the job you will be working for crappy management with an old school approach)
• Sell it “consultatively” - Establish their situation, identify pains, etc (“How do you currently record information? How would you like to change your current situation if you could?”, etc,). This could be an exceptionally difficult sell… it’s likely to be a highly undifferentiated product and if the interviewer decides to make life difficult for you are really in trouble!
• Pitch it straight off – “This pen has a beautiful red line along the side, writes fantastically, etc…”
• Skilfully explain to the interviewer why this is not a good interview question

Personally I would only know which of the above I would choose in the heat of the moment. I lean towards the first or last options. What would you do?

Mr Miyagi says, “Act As If, Salesman, san”

Take on the qualities of others to overcome short-term self-doubt

This technique, "Act as if", seems so “new age-y” that I’d like to tell you that I learned it from some Mr Miyagi style sales guru in a misty Japanese valley when training as a complex-sale ninja.

In fact I learned it from an obnoxious middle-aged sales manager halfway up a tower block in Bristol. Still, it really works, and if you suspend your scepticism for a moment, you could take a look at this and see if it’s for you.

All of us have been in situations in which we feel out of our comfort zone. Meeting senior executives early in your sales career, negotiating lump-in-the-throat important contracts, or presenting to large numbers of people are good examples for most people.

The strange thing is (unless it requires specialist knowledge you don’t have), you do actually know what needs to be said and done to successfully deal with the situation (for example, “I need to go in there, shake hands with everyone, look confident and strike up conversation with the CEO”).

Furthermore, in almost all cases you are physically capable of doing these things (i.e. saying the words, making the movements), but some how you feel you just “can’t” do it, because of all the things that make you, you.

This is an effective quick fix that can get you through those moments of self doubt :

1. Ask yourself “Who would THRIVE in this situation? Who would absolutely ace this, without question?” (Perhaps a family friend, former boss or colleague, TV/film character)
2. Picture this person in your head successfully dealing with the situation. Watch them in your mind, look at their movements, listen to what they say, and think what they would think, adopt their body language…
3. Take the useful elements of what you have just seen and heard, get up and walk into that situation, imbued with the qualities of the person you were thinking about.

Ridiculously simple and very effective. If you find using other people as examples weird, just think of a time in the past that you performed brilliantly and replay it in your head. It may take you a little time to "get", so try it 5 times in the next week or so before you make your final judgement.

Even if you are sceptical now, I guarantee you’ll try this next time you’re faced with such a situation (That’s just a guess by the way – seeing into the future is next week’s sales ninja blog post ;-)

Honest, I'm NOT in recruitment!

Get your UK/Euro sales jobs here!

Everyone seems to be asking me for good sales people right now (which is odd, as I'm not actually in recruitment!). Here are the positions I know about. If you are interested, contact me and I'll put you in touch.

• Software Sales - Field sales, territory based
  
• 2 x Field sales reps selling into the European academic market
• Web services sales - Field sales, but Oxford based

If none of those grab you, let me know what you're after, as I know some guys who might be able to help.

How to lose your credibility in less than one second

Cliched phrases turn buyers off

I think it's entirely reasonable to suggest that anyone who uses the following phrases in their sales or marketing materials should be shot :

• "In today's competitive marketplace"
  
• "In today's global marketplace"

Together, these two search terms get 150,000 mentions on Google. However true it is, when something is said too much it loses all its meaning and becomes a cliche. Please. Stop. It's boring...

How to get voicemail returned

More sales trickery from Gitomer

I won't be using them, but you can't help but chuckle at sales comedian, sorry, I mean guru, Jeffrey Gitomer's two ideas for getting voicemails returned.

(Tell me if you find any funny/useful sales videos online and I'll post 'em here. Thanks.)

Prank sales call video

Bad behaviour from the Eighties

It's 8 mins or so but worth watching. By the way tell me if you find any funny/useful sales videos online and I'll post 'em here.

Why there's no "P" in "itch"

Using the word "pitching" puts us and our colleagues in the wrong frame of mind.

Isn't it time we dumped - or at least used more appropriately - the phrase "pitching"? Consider the real thing in baseball, where the phrase came from. We're likening our interactions with prospects to throwing a hard object, from us to them, at a hundred miles per hour! Quality sales interactions are a two (three, ten...) way affair and are rarely aggressive in any way.

There's no "P" in "itch" and it'll stay that way. Disagree?

Fear sells!

Sales people can use fear (perceived future pain) to create results right away.

Marketing man Seth Godin understands a fundamental principle of sales in this post : fear drives buying action. As he explains, "Fear is a universal emotion, it's viral and people will go to great lengths to make it go away."

How can sales people use fear? "Buy it or Knuckles here will continue the negotiations" would probably be considered ethically dubious. Here's a better approach. Most of us already sell around "pain" or "problems" (i.e. identifying, drawing out and investigating problems that a prospect has right now). For example:

Buyer : "We are on time with 85% of our deliveries"
Seller : (spotting a potential pain) "What about the other 15%?"
Buyer : "Well, half our trucks are over 10 years old, so they're falling apart a little."

The sales person has spotted a pain to draw out and investigate further. So what is fear in the selling context? Fear is the threat of pain at some point in the future.

Buyer : "Well, half our trucks are over 10 years old, so they're falling apart a little."
Seller : "If you stick with those trucks for say the next 5 years, what would you expect that late delivery rate to be?"

With a little more work from the sales person, what seems like a small pain now becomes a huge pain in the future. Could the late delivery rate reach 30%? How would that impact customer satisfaction and repeat orders? How much lost revenue would that result in? Would it attract negative press?

There's something even more interesting about fear. It's a well documented phenomenon that the fear (i.e. the perception of the seriousness) of the pain in the future is often worse than the pain itself when it actually arrives.

The bottom line? If they are skillful, sales people can use fear to significantly increase the seriousness of pain in a buyer's mind, right now.

More pain = more need for a solution = more chance of a successful sale.

Ask a buyer :

• What do you think (pain/issue) will look like in 3, 5, 10 years time?
• What happens if you don't (implement a system, solve this issue, reduce X, Y or Z)?
• What damage do you think Knuckles could do in the next 10 minutes?
  

You think your sales manager is bad?

Tough sales management from sales film Glengarry Glen Ross (bad language warning...)

Comments on how would this fly in your office?

Yeah, I'm in sales! Part 2 of 2 : The truth about sales

(Read "Part 1 of 2 : Sales has an image problem" first!)

Today’s sales professional should be proud to be an important, highly-skilled value creator.

Sales’ current PR problem stems from stereotypes that were formed before “consultative” sales methods were introduced when, on the whole, sales really was a predatory, combatitive, money grabbing, win/lose affair.

Sales professionals as value creators

Things have changed today. Thorough buying processes and wary, savvy buyers have (thankfully) rendered yesteryear’s sales techniques near enough useless. Consultative sales methodologies like Solution Selling, SPIN Selling, Strategic Selling, Conceptual Selling and PSS teach sales professionals to add value by helping buyers understand the implications of both the problem and potential solutions.

Sales people create huge amounts of value for the organisations and the economy as a whole. Their performance is transparent so they rarely become a drain on the organisations.

All this contribution is made in the face of significant challenges – tough cold-calling, long hours preparing proposals, being grilled by prospects and having the courage to step outside of one’s comfort zone on a daily basis. Not only do sales people contribute significant value, they are also among the toughest, strongest-minded and most focused people in the modern company.

Sales skills

Sales professionals are required to display a huge swathe of skills, often in a board level environment – non-verbal communication, problem-solving, communication, territory management, presenting, conflict resolution, even financial and risk analysis. The truth is – it’s hard – really hard, and not many people can do it well (but the rewards – monetarily or in plain frontline excitement – can be high)

Sales really is an exciting, highly skilled and important job that is not only at the leading edge of business, but also the economy. Next time someone asks you what you do, be proud to tell them you are a sales person. I know I am.

What are your experiences/views on this issue? Comment now (registration not required).

Yeah, I'm in sales! Part 1 of 2 : Sales has an image problem

Negative views of the sales profession cause damage to companies, economies and individuals.

“So, what do you do?”

“I’m in sales,” you reply.

“Ohh…” they say, looking slightly uncomfortable. “What is it you really want to do?”

We’ve all heard this before, or something very close to it. I wrote an article for the Institute of Sales and Marketing Management’s print magazine Winning Edge about this very subject. Here’s a cut down web version:

A Major Role

Sales has an image problem. James Hammersley, the CEO of sales consultancy Win recently told me that, when visiting his old university to give a speech on selling, he asked the audience to describe the defining traits of a salesperson. The responses included ‘sleazy’, ‘untrustworthy’, and even ‘alcoholic’!

Walter Friedman’s excellent history of selling, “Birth of a Salesman” reveals a survey of mothers in the US put sales as the least desirable ‘white collar’ job for their sons and daughters. Another American study discussed in the book explains that only politicians are considered less trustworthy than salespeople.

So what?

Well, let’s face it, status and recognition are important to today’s professionals. Without them job dissatisfaction kicks in, leading to low morale, lower performance levels and higher staff turnover. Furthermore, as individuals opt for “cooler” careers the pool of new sales people is reduced and recruitment becomes even more difficult.

Perhaps the most damaging outcomes of the low esteem in which sales is held occur when such attitudes pervade an organisation and its management. Anyone who has ever witnessed an organisation with such a mind set will know that this self fulfilling prophecy results in a demotivated sales force, high staff turnover and, ultimately, lower sales.

See "Part 2 of 2 : The truth about sales" tomorrow.