Archive for November, 2013
Salespeople Need To Improve Their Social Media Skills
Posted by Rick Pranitis in SALES BEST PRACTICES on November 26, 2013
As business-to-business companies rely more on social collaboration tools, some of the biggest gainers are going to be salespeople – and not just because they can fan, friend, or follow prospects.
Salespeople can use online social platforms to increase productivity. This includes understanding and influencing customer relationships, creating new channels for research, improving collaboration within sales teams, and increasing responsiveness to customers. We’re already seeing it start to happen.
More business-to-business customers attend to information they receive through social media, often long before these customers even enter a traditional sales cycle. About 60 percent of customers’ research happens before contacting sales, according to a Corporate Executive Board report. Some 37 percent of customers’ evaluations of products and services stem from conversations on social media. The first step is to create a deep social “listening” capability to monitor the discussions around your own offerings, and those of competitors. Better yet, come up with a strategy to intervene and engage in brand or product social conversations, and then respond quickly to recommendations, misinformation or criticisms.
Social targeting
Business-to-business salespeople must target decision makers and influencers, learning, as efficiently as possible, who in a customer company has the authority to make decisions, who can influence those decisions, and what those people are thinking and doing. Social media provides great data for identifying those people. By analyzing the connections and data revealed through social media, or even from emails received from customer addresses, it’s possible to map the relationships in a customer organization. This map helps to reveal the chain of decision-makers in the corporate hierarchy, as well as key influencers (some of whom might even be outside the company). After generating or discovering a sales opportunity, the sales team can deploy quickly to contact all of the individuals who can influence a potential sale.
One tech company, for example, tracked the appearance of certain key words on social platforms. When it noticed a decision maker from a prospect company asking a question online, it matched the question and the prospect’s location with a specific salesperson and sent along the lead, converting on these leads almost 80 percent of the time.
Social responsiveness
Social platforms can also enhance internal collaboration within sales teams. Used within enterprises, social tools can make conversations amongst sales and other colleagues in other functions (e.g., marketing, customer service) visible and searchable. This lets everyone related to a particular customer share valuable information. Skilled users of advanced knowledge management processes can then track and tag these interactions to build a company’s institutional knowledge base. In addition, new account-team members can ramp up much more quickly by having this information accessible.
In terms of customer responsiveness, internal social platforms can cut down the time it takes for a sales team to get an answer on price, specs, customization, and other issues. Social platforms can take the place of e-mail, allowing the first qualified person who sees a customer request to start responding. In some cases, we’ve seen answer time drop from two days to two hours. That’s huge – it saves both the salesperson and the customer a lot of frustration. Furthermore, using social media to communicate with customers creates visibility for the entire account team about what is being said to customers. This is far more efficient than entering information into a traditional CRM system.
Social platform use is shifting behaviors and expectations of customers and employees alike. In response, corporations are increasingly adopting social platforms. More than three-quarters of the respondents in a McKinsey survey of over 3,500 companies worldwide report that they are using at least one social technology.
Sales organizations in business-to-business companies, however, have only scratched the surface. While salespeople have long been known for their social skills, those who can hone their social media skills will thrive in the digital age.
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This article originally appeared in the CMO Network blog on April 16, 2013.
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Seven Sales Habits Ruining Your Reputation
Posted by Rick Pranitis in GENERAL DISCUSSION on November 22, 2013
Some would say the sales profession doesn’t exactly have a stellar reputation. And it’s true, the industry is fraught with sales people who will say or do anything to close a deal and this includes companies who condone such behavior. Unfortunately, you might also be guilty of some bad sales habits — habits which could be affecting how your sales actions are perceived.
Here are seven sales habits that might be giving you a bad reputation.
1. Pitching too soon – The vast majority of sales people pitch their product or service too soon. As a result, they end up pitching the wrong solution or they fail to effectively position their solution because they haven’t taken the time to conduct a thorough discovery to determine if the prospect actually has a need for their solution.
2. Opening your pitch by talking about your company – I’m flabbergasted by the number of sales people (and company executives) who still believe this is the best way to open a sales presentation. They use valuable time talking about their company and its achievements instead of focusing on what is important to their prospect…a solution to a problem.
3. Failing to listen – Too many salespeople don’t listen to their customers or prospects and that means they fail to address the key issues that their customer has stated as being important. It sounds simple but it is a common occurrence in the business world. One of the easiest ways to connect with a decision maker is to carefully listen to what they tell you.
4. Not understanding key business issues – In today’s highly competitive business world, sales people are expected to have a strong grasp of issues that are affecting their prospect’s business and/or industry. Bringing new insights to the table can help you stand out from your competition and improve your reputation as a sales professional.
5. Not asking enough high-value questions – It still amazes me how many salespeople think that telling is selling but your prospect or customer should be doing most of the talking in a sales conversation. The key is to ask high-value, thought-provoking questions that get your prospect thinking.
6. Delivering a generic presentation – The objective of a sales presentation is to demonstrate why your prospect should buy your product, service, solution or offering. Unfortunately, very few sales people craft a presentation that is tailored to each prospect. Instead, they use the same slides, the same information and the same approach with every prospect.
7. Failing to follow through – A prospect asks for a particular piece of information and the sales person promises to deliver it by a certain date. The deadline passes and the prospect has to call and remind the salesperson. Because the sale has not been finalized, warning signals sound in the customer’s mind. After all, if the sales person is this slow to respond BEFORE the sale is made (the courting stage), how long will it take him to respond AFTER the sale?
Selling is an honorable profession. Improve your reputation and gain your prospect’s trust and respect by avoiding these bad sales habits.
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This article originally appeared in the Fearless Selling Blog on November 18, 2013.
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Quantifying your value proposition
Posted by Rick Pranitis in SALES BEST PRACTICES on November 12, 2013
Quantifying your value proposition requires creating and communicating a clear, compelling picture of how your solution will drive your customer’s business results – allowing sales reps to make their business case. It requires translating the benefits of your solution into high impact, measurable outcomes that matter to the customer. When done effectively, it enables you to maximize the competitive advantages that differentiate you from your competitors.
Quantifying a value proposition involves three steps:
– First, list the business outcomes your solution impacts (e.g., improvement in the percentage of just-in-time deliveries).
– Second, select a customer metric that will demonstrate the impact of the business outcome (e.g., reduction in inventory x annual inventory carrying costs = value of just-in-time deliveries).
– Third, determine the most compelling anchor which will bring the metric to life (e.g., compare the outcome of your solution against the status quo or compare it against your estimate of the competitor’s solution or against other companies in the customer’s market space).
What are some best practices for quantifying value? Having a simple and straightforward planning process for the quantifying value is one piece of the puzzle. As is often the case; however, the real difficulty and creativity lie in the execution. Hence it is useful to explore four best practices for quantifying and selling value.
1. Sell the Concept First. Top performers do a superior job quantifying their value proposition but they don’t just “sell by the numbers.” Even a great set of numbers will fall on deaf ears if you have not established a foundation-level of understanding of your solution and a high level of trust. What’s the worst possibility? The quantitative analysis is viewed as a selling ploy and therefore discounted accordingly.
2. Remember the Ripple Effect. Often in addition to the primary impact of your solution, there are, as well, secondary and tertiary positive outcomes. The other benefits might occur in another division, in a different time frame or for an alternative set of players inside the organization. Make sure you have uncovered and demonstrated the payoffs of the Ripple Effect.
3. Translate Soft Differentiators. If your only major competitive advantage is price, the challenge of quantifying your value proposition is simple and straightforward. On the other hand, if you have other competitive advantages – such as integrity, superior integration, and creativity – the challenge exists to translate those soft differentiators. It is easy to quantify that part of your value proposition that is easily measurable, like price. However it is equally important, although much harder, to generate quantifiable proxies for soft differentiators.
Soft differentiators tend to fall into two categories: Value Adds and Strategic Opportunities. Value Adds focus on improvements to the quality of the business operations. Examples of intangible benefits include:
– Providing better information and/or more timely information
– Improving customer good will
– Improving service image
– Identifying problems on a timelier basis
Strategic Opportunities are those intangible benefits that help the customer expand its business. They might include:
– Protecting a company’s competitive position
– Increasing market share
– Venturing into new markets
4. Tell the Integration Story. Many companies have created integrated solutions. However, they continue to sell the individual pieces – hence there is a huge opportunity for differentiation for those that get it right. One solution: help the customer connect the dots and understand the power of an integrated solution by displaying a unique set of numbers that tell the story.
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