Archive for May, 2013
Seven Ways to Become a Better Salesperson
Posted by Rick Pranitis in SALES BEST PRACTICES on May 31, 2013
Being in sales is a constant battle for improvement. Whether it’s getting better at overcoming objections, improving your appointment setting success ratios, or increasing the number and size of deals you close, every salesperson is trying to get better every day.
By making incremental improvements in the way we operate, salespeople have a unique opportunity to see big results. Here are seven things, which if you focus your attention upon, will assure you success.
Become a problem solver – the best sales people do more than just dial the phone and meet with customers – they are creative, innovative, energized professional problem solvers and relationship builders. Your job is not just to sell a company your particular service offering, but rather to solve their problems. Once you change your mind set to think of your role as a problem solver, you will learn to be more tuned in to your prospects pain issues and what motivates them. Start looking at your position as a problem solver and will see a difference in your client interaction.
Offer information – sales people need to constantly work to build trust with customers as part of the process of nurturing sales leads over time. One of the best ways to build trust with customers is to share the latest news, industry trends and business intelligence. If you find an article about their industry that you think would benefit the customer, share it with them – even if you didn’t write it.
Overcome your fear of rejection – sales is a tough job because prospects are constantly rejecting you, hanging up, saying “no,” sometimes even acting abrupt or rude. The best sales people know how to rise above the daily rejections and keep pressing forward. Remind yourself that you are a talented professional with a great solution to offer the right customers. Remember that there are a lot of customers who need what you have to offer, and that you’re going to find them and connect with them. Face the rejection head-on. After all, who cares if someone rejects you? It’s not personal. They’re just busy and don’t have time to talk, or they’ve been discouraged by too many time-wasting phone calls from other less scrupulous sales people. Customer rejection is not about you, it’s about them. The best sales people have thick skin and maintain control of their emotional state even in the face of adversity – but this unflappable nature is usually not something people are born with; it’s a way of being that is earned over time. Let the rejections go, and keep moving forward to talk to the people who will be happy to hear from you – they are waiting for someone like you to help them.
Ask for contact information – sales people often find themselves on the phone with the wrong person – i.e. an administrative assistant in the wrong department, reporting up the wrong chain of command to get to your ultimate decision maker. But don’t give up just because your calling list had the wrong information. Instead, be direct and ask the person on the phone to help you out. Instead of hanging up, ask the person you’re speaking to, “Could you give me the phone number for (NAME OF DECISION MAKER)?”
Ask for the next appointment – every salesperson needs to constantly guide the prospect through the sales cycle. Every conversation needs to end with the sales person asking the prospect to commit to a future conversation – whether it’s on the phone, in person or via web conference. Before you can “make the ask” and close the deal, you need to make the “ask” for your next appointment.
Take great notes – many sales people make the mistake of taking sparse or incomplete notes about their sales calls. Taking better notes can give you a trove of useful information for your next conversation with the customer. Write down specific details about which objections, questions and issues came up during the conversation. Not only are these details important for closing a deal with the customer in the future, but they might also be helpful for conversations with other customers. Make a list of questions, objections and challenges that you weren’t able to answer – then compare notes with other colleagues on the sales team, do some research, and follow up with the customer on a future call. Showing that you’re committed to finding the right answers will help you build trust with the prospect.
Learn from your colleagues – the best sales people don’t feel threatened by the successes of their peers, they celebrate team success and find a way to learn from the successes of others on the sales team. If one of your peers recently landed a big account, find out how they did it. Take your successful peers out for lunch or coffee and ask for advice on which sales techniques have been working for them. Good sales people know that success is not a zero-sum game. They will want to help other people on the sales team improve their results so that the whole team can benefit.
Being a better salesperson is often not a matter of making drastic improvements, but instead is about making smaller improvements in multiple areas over time. No matter how successful you are as a salesperson, you can achieve better results by adjusting your performance in at least one of these areas. Successful selling is a combination of art and science. It’s about passion, motivation, drive, and interpersonal performance, but it’s also about managing details, monitoring a process, and striving with rigor for excellence.
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Four Reasons You Need to Implement Performance Measurements
Posted by Rick Pranitis in GENERAL DISCUSSION, SALES LEADERSHIP on May 24, 2013
Most business leaders know intuitively they should be using data to measure their organization’s progress and drive future decisions. However, when things get busy, data is often the first item to drop off the radar.
Have you made performance measurements a priority at your organization? When you understand the advantages that monitoring data can offer you may be more willing to make it a consistent priority. Using metrics to set clear, quantifiable goals within your company offers four distinct benefits:
1. Performance measurements help to create focus by offering clear goals. Some departments—such as your sales team—may live and die by their numbers. However, other departments may lack the hard-number goals that keep them motivated to perform. If your team doesn’t have a realistic goal guiding their day-to-day work, they may end up feeling unmotivated and directionless. Numbers give people something to shoot for.
The metrics you choose need to be meaningful. Annual numbers are too abstract, and even quarterly numbers may get ignored until the final two weeks of the quarter. Figure out what defines “success” for each one of your departments and work with your leadership team to pick a metric which tracks that measure of success. For example, does your marketing department keep track of the number of prospects their campaigns bring in the door? Does your technical support team track the average resolution time for their tickets?
By giving everyone a quantifiable number that guides their daily work, you’ll be offering them clear targets for results and setting up your company for consistent success.
2. Using metrics can also help your team grow. Tracking the right data also enables your managers to create accountability by establishing clear expectations for each of their team members. By examining each person’s results, your managers will get a quick snapshot of how each team member is performing in that dimension. Team members who need additional management or training will get the attention they need.
Additionally, within a team setting, performance measurements can also help to create a greater sense of teamwork by increasing camaraderie—and even some healthy peer pressure—to perform.
3. Keeping track of your business metrics is also good for revealing potential problems—before they grow too large. Monitoring performance measurements throughout your company will give you a good feel for how your company is really doing. Potential stumbling blocks will become evident long before they become large issues, allowing you and your team to attack them head-on and solve them proactively. For example, if your tech team is suddenly spending significantly more time closing tickets, you might uncover a system glitch that needs attention before it halts your whole operation.
Using your data to spot problems early on allows you and your team get out in front of your challenges, rather than waiting for them to impact your bottom line.
4. Relying on hard data, your leadership team can reduce the amount of time it takes to make the big decisions. Timely decisions keep your organization on track toward fulfilling its overall vision. By creating a clear set of measurable metrics which are well-defined, easy to track and understood by everyone in your organization, you’ll be able to make informed choices backed by solid data.
It will also get you and your team in the habit of collecting important metrics as you build your business, rather than running around after the fact to collect numbers. These habits enable the clarity and honesty you need to make the right decisions for your business’ future.
One Final Note – we’ve all heard rumors about companies who have gone data crazy and lost their perspective in the process. Performance measures are designed to help you reach your ultimate outcomes, but they’re not your end goal. As you introduce performance measurements into your organization, make sure you do so with the right perspective. Your chosen metrics represent a single dimension of your company’s health. They always need to be assessed with your company’s ultimate vision in mind. In other words, when you’re analyzing data, always ask yourself what you are really trying to achieve—and how this number will get you there. Then, make your decisions accordingly.
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This article originally was posted to the Vistage.com blog by Kevin McArdie on May 23, 2013.
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12 Elements of a Great Sales Playbook
Posted by Rick Pranitis in GENERAL DISCUSSION, SALES LEADERSHIP on May 17, 2013
The implementation of a sales playbook can be one of the most impactful initiatives for any sales organization. There are two reasons for this tremendous ROI. First, by following some simple guidelines, it can be a remarkably easy initiative to implement, and second, research shows that this results in 33% additional revenue.
Here are twelve elements of a great sales playbook that you should use to guide your implementation.
1. Repeatable Winning Sales Processes
The key word here is ‘repeatable’. When everyone adopts the same sales process, there is a common language that is understood, not just by sales, but by the whole organization. Recent research shows that while only 60% of sales teams have a sales process that is well defined, and well executed – those who do are 33% more likely to be High Performers*.
2. Customized to the Buying Cycle
Customers buy in lots of different ways; some purchases are guided by a single decision maker, while in other cases there can be a large buying committee. Some issue RFPs (health-warning!), others invite recognized suppliers to discuss their issues, an increasing number learn in the Social Universe, and just a few remain with the incumbent supplier trading ‘the devil you know’ for potentially more advanced or competitive solutions. Unless you visualize the journey the customer wants to take, you won’t be with them when they reach their destination.
3. Sales Tools in Context at Each Stage
At each stage of the buying process, salespeople need to employ just the right tools – at the right time to advance the sale to the next stage in the process. A B2B sale is not a single event. In fact it is a collection of micro-sales events, each crafted to move closer to the eventual goal. Salespeople are busy and often don’t know which tool they need, where to find it or how to use it at the specific point in the micro-sale. Integrating sales tools into the playbook as part of the sales process is the solution.
4. Industry Sales Process Templates
It is widely accepted that tailoring your sales process to the specific needs of an industry will increase your chances for success. Third party industry sales templates are readily available from suppliers who have been tracking and analyzing millions of sales cycles. That is the catalyst you need to get started.
5. Many Simple and Complex Processes
One playbook or sales process does not fit all. Sometimes you are pursuing a brand new customer or a very large deal that demands a complex and sophisticated set of ‘plays’ to win the deal. In other cases, the transaction might be quick, one that suggests a different rhythm. Your sales playbook should have the requisite intelligence to support that automatically and serve up the right playbook at the right time.
6. Process, Benchmarks and Insight
Benchmarking delivers many advantages for companies looking to improve the performance of their sales organization. Your playbook must capture those benefits, learn from them, and uncover insights that help you to drive your sales velocity. When deploying a playbook, ensure that you have built in a capability that guides you to progress through these stages of evolution for your sales team.
7. Team Visibility for the Sales Manager
Being a front-line sales manager is one of the hardest jobs in sales. It is also the critical link in sales. Unless the sales manager has all the tools he or she needs to easily manage the business, the whole performance of the sales organization could suffer. You need to provide them with the ‘Easy Button’. Sales playbooks are often designed just with the sales person in mind. Remember that the sales manager is the critical link.
8. Integrates with CRM System
This one should be a ‘no-brainer’. The playbook must integrate tightly with the CRM system so when the sales person works with an opportunity, the playbook will always be present, just where it needs to be. That way the playbook (if it is smart enough) can react to the attributes of the opportunity, like the size of the deal, or the products included in the opportunity record to present the right playbook for that opportunity. Complete integration with your CRM delivers the optimum experience for the sales person, and provides sales managers with greater flexibility on how they view the data in the context of the rest of the business. It is important.
9. Informs Sales Forecast Visibility
Salespeople spend about 2.5 hours each week on sales forecasting, and for most companies, the accuracy of sales forecasts leave a lot to be desired. To maximize the impact of your sales playbook on the accuracy of your sales forecast, there are two things to consider. (1) Does the sales playbook incorporate intelligence that objectively monitors the close date of the sale? (2) Does the sales playbook provide the sales manager with insight into deal vulnerabilities and risks in the forecast?
10. Motivational and Visual
There are only two reasons why an individual does not complete a task. Either they do not have the competence, or they are not motivated enough to do it. Think about that – these are the only two reasons. Your sales playbook should improve competence and increase motivation. The competence piece is easily understood.
Motivation is a little more challenging. A study on What Motivates Sales People shows that, perhaps surprisingly for some, compensation is not the primary motivator. ‘Making Progress of Winning’ is ranked by sales people as the main reason they get up in the morning. To entice adoption of the sales playbook (rather than force compliance) your sales playbook needs to provide true value for the sales person – resolve that reward/effort equation, so that the salesperson gets more back from the playbook that they put into it.
11. Social and Collaborative
As B2B companies rely more heavily on social collaboration tools, some of the biggest gainers are going to be salespeople. Sales people who are the leaders in their organization are using social tools such as Chatter in Salesforce to improve collaboration in their own sales teams. Leading sales playbooks help by letting everyone ‘follow’ the plays, contributes to the conversation, and collaborate on the deal. The B2B world is constantly becoming more social and collaborative and you should ensure that your sales playbook accommodates this advancement.
12. Mobile and Cloud
Time is precious, and the sales person’s time is incredibly precious, both to them and to the sales organization looking to maximize the performance of their key quota-bearers. Since so much of a sales person’s time is spent moving between A and B and back again, they should be equipped with the mobility to connect to their sales playbook allowing them to be responsive, productive, collaborative and consistent at any time, wherever they are. In other applications, mobile and cloud capabilities are being leveraged to facilitate access anywhere, anytime. It must be the same with your sales playbook.
Unless mobile and cloud are core elements of your sales playbook plan, the initiative could face severe challenges in a very short term.
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This article was originally posted to the Dealmaker® 365 blog by Donal Daly on May 12, 2013
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A Business Owner’s Simple Guide to Ruining a New Employee
Posted by Rick Pranitis in GENERAL DISCUSSION on May 7, 2013
Most small business owners are not human resources experts, so dealing with hiring/staffing issues is often difficult. Additionally, most tend to gravitate toward what they enjoy, and for business owners that’s usually working with clients, generating new business and developing personal relationships. This can sometimes leave internal practice management issues neglected, with employee relations being perhaps the most overlooked area.
Here are some of the mistakes that some SMB owners most often make when they hire new employees:
Not knowing or understanding the role. This is probably the biggest hurdle, but it is the easiest to avoid. It takes firm owners asking themselves the tough strategic planning and vision creation questions which they sometimes put off. Owners need to have a good idea of where they want to end up so they can shape how they want professional staff to help get them there. They need to ask: Will more of the same get me where I want to be? Or is the new hire going to bring with them the introduction of a “fresh air” approach within the organization? And, am I willing to accept the changes that will bring on? Often, firms are reactive and hire backward due to an unexpected increased workload and operate in the “just get me somebody” mindset. This type of short-term thinking can lead to bigger problems further down the road. In other cases, when business owners think they have an idea of what they want their new hire to do and how they want the new position to look, despite what may be to them a clear internal perception, they do not communicate it well or fully to the candidate.
Assuming too much. This is a symptom of the first pitfall. Owners sometimes assume the new hire knows what the position should entail and the new hire assumes the owners know what they want. All of this assuming is a recipe for disaster because the relationship never gets started off on the right foot. Candidates should have a good idea of what type of role they think they would perform the best in, but the buck stops with the owner to have a strategic vision for the firm and a specific vision for where and how the new candidate fits. Further, this vision must be consistent, and not reactionary or constantly changing.
Little to no ongoing communication/mentoring. This is a direct effect of assuming too much. Communication is critical, especially during the on-boarding stage and directly after. Business owners are usually hiring someone because they are beyond overloaded and therefore can’t spend the appropriate time getting the new hire up to speed. Yet for many top talented individuals, mentoring is the primary reason they choose to join a certain firm. They deeply desire an experienced mentor that is willing to spend the time to teach them the side of the business of which they’re unaware or haven’t fully experienced. In some cases, this is why many gravitate toward smaller firms and sometimes take less pay.
Throughout the mentoring process, regular communication is imperative. Always let your new hires know where they stand. Younger employees are used to constant and instant communication through texting, MySpace, Facebook and Twitter. It would almost be impossible to over-communicate with your new hire from this social genre. If you don’t deliver on the mentoring, you lose a crucial chance to help build firm loyalty with your “newbie.” If you know you are not a good mentor (and not all of you are), find someone, or work out another process for training and working closely with your new hire.
No involvement in the decision-making process. If business owners see their new hires as being part of the firm long-term, then these employees should be included in the firm’s decision-making. Owners don’t necessarily have to use a new hire’s suggestions, but a new hire that knows he or she is heard will likely find more satisfaction and show more loyalty. Follow the lead of some of the larger public firms, which bring all of their new hires together to get their unbiased, untainted, fresh ideas and fuel creativity and company innovation.
Viewing candidates as “Mini-Me’s”. Some firm owners try to make new hires exact replicas of themselves. From the outside looking in, this often makes little sense, but it is still attempted frequently by small business owners. Ideally, you want to minimize overlap and maximize talent over a broad set of areas, especially in a small firm. Resist the urge to force your skill set template onto the new hires even if they are receptive. Frustration can build on both sides when this approach is tried. Your firm will benefit most if your new hire has a skill set that complements yours, not one that clones it.
Not providing challenging and meaningful work. New hires will have a longing to pursue meaningful and challenging work so that they can add value to a firm. Give them projects and increase the level of responsibility as they prove themselves. It is up to the new individual to prove his or her skills, but it is the manager’s job to push new hires out of their comfort zones and help them avoid stagnation. Keep in mind that part of letting them try different things to build their experience means letting them make mistakes too. We all learn from failure, we grow from failure, we innovate from failure-if we don’t fail, we don’t grow.
The feedback trap. Avoid giving only negative feedback and disguising it as constructive criticism. Consider how you give your clients feedback. This is a great way to approach things with your new hire. At the onset of a great client relationship, you provide honest feedback about the positive aspects of the situation and the areas that need the most focus. It shouldn’t be any different with new hires. Consider the different ways you communicate with different clients. You will need to find the communication and feedback style that works with your new hire. Consider personality profiles or other behavioral surveys to understand the best way to get the most out of your new hire. Keep in mind, in this highly transitory society many of new hires may be from diverse backgrounds and cultural environments. So finding the best approach to relate, communicate and manage them will save you time and headaches. Plus, don’t forget feedback is reciprocal. Don’t be offended when they give you honest feedback about your performance-it can only make your firm better.
Lack of a career path. Small business owners sometimes struggle with the transition from hire mode to post-hire mode. This is similar to politicians who are always in getting-elected mode even after securing office. It is prudent for owners to think to themselves, “OK, they are hired, now what do I need to be doing, other than signing a paycheck, to give them opportunities for career progression?” Most new employees are not going to be satisfied staying in the same position for their entire career. Furthermore, if you cannot produce a career track or describe how one might look in your firm, be ready to lose out to other firms that can.
Not sticking to your guns. If you don’t have the first issue above figured out, an accurate job description can’t be developed. If you don’t have an accurate (written) job description, it is virtually impossible to ask the right interview questions. Plus, without these two items, job performance metrics can’t be developed. Resist the temptation while interviewing to say to yourself, “I really like that person and they could work here,” if their characteristics don’t fit your job profile. Stick to the position you are hiring for! And that same vein, don’t change your expectations or perceptions of the new hire’s reason for coming on-board to something they didn’t sign on for after they’ve joined your firm.
For those that have not ventured into hiring yet, you will most certainly encounter something on this list at one point or another during the process if, or when, you take the plunge. With some awareness, simple planning and concerted effort you will be well on your way for a smooth integration with your new hire. A small up-front thoughtful investment of time and money in human capital, and an on-going consistent follow through, will pay big dividends later – for you and your new hires.
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