Posts Tagged B2B Sales
Does Your View Of Value Limit You And Your Customers?
Posted by Rick Pranitis in Sales Process Evaluation on March 25, 2016
Value is one of those $25 words everyone talks about. We all want to talk about our value and value propositions. But we have huge variations in the way we interpret value and the way our customers interpret value.
Value in it’s simplest form is price. Unfortunately, that’s where the majority of sales people compete. They provide the customer with their best price, crossing their fingers, hoping to win. The customer is left with the challenge of which alternative to choose. Since, inevitably, the entire alternative will meet their requirements; the only differentiator becomes the vendor offering the lowest price. Customers still struggle, their job isn’t over, and they still have to justify the investments they are making to their management. A lot of “done deals” get undone at this point, so even if our price has been the lowest, we don’t get a PO.
Some sales people, unfortunately far too few, go a step further. They provide a business justification for their solution. It may be a cost benefit analysis, they may have calculated ROI, NPV, Payback. That’s a huge step forward. It changes the basis for comparing alternatives, because it focuses on return the customer will expect to receive. There are still some challenges with this, and value that we leave on the table that could be claimed by both the customer and us. Most of the time, we are looking strictly at the business case for our solution, not the business case for the customer project. We may just be a component of the solution, so we aren’t helping the customer understand the entire picture. Maybe we’ve done a TCO, which should look at the entire project over its life cycle. But there are a number of other things the customer has to consider in their business case.
Risk is a huge part of what the customer has to figure out. This is both risks in the project success and in achieving the long term outcomes which is why the customer initiated the project in the first place. (That last part is often called value realization. I’ll be coming back to this later.)
The other challenge the customer faces is justifying this investment to their management. Their managers are responsible for determining how to best invest in various projects that compete for funding. To get what they want, the customers presenting our solution have to position–justify the project in terms of how it contributes to the attainment of the strategic goals. Only the best alternative will win. But too often, our customers don’t recognize they need to do this, or don’t know how to do this. Unless, we’ve understood the company priorities and goals, unless we’ve helped the customer connect the dots from this project–what they want to do–with the strategic priorities of the company, they won’t get the funding. We don’t get the PO.
The next level is value realization. Are they actually getting the value we claimed in the first place? Did they get the results expected? Too often, we ignore this. After all, we and the customer don’t know until sometime after we’ve gotten the PO. It could be months or years. We’ve already spent our commission checks on the deal. But value realization is critical to the customer. If they don’t realize the value expected, they have failed. It may mean a failed product launch, adversely impacting the perception/competitiveness of their company in the markets. It could be a failed internal project. They don’t achieve the cost/expense reductions expected. They don’t achieve the quality and customer satisfaction goals they expected. They didn’t achieve the margin or profitability improvements expected, They didn’t see the revenue uplift expected. Failure to realize value has huge business consequence for the customer–they could, in fact go out of business. It also has huge personal impacts for the customer, they could lose their jobs. The impact of not realizing the value expected can be devastating. For example think of Takata Airbags and the impact on automobile manufacturers, dealers, and customers.
People in SaaS, embedded products, or similar types of business are seeing the importance of value realization. Customers simply aren’t renewing their contracts. When the contract expires, the customer doesn’t renew it.
This challenge also applies to outright purchases. If the customer doesn’t get the value they expected, they won’t buy again–for the upgrade, the next project, the cross-sell opportunity. They might even become a negative referral, impacting potential business in the rest of the market.
So making sure our customers realize the value claimed is critical for their and our future success.
But there’s more.
We know 60-70% of projects end in no decision made. Most of the time it has nothing to do with selecting solution alternatives, but it has everything to do with the customer internal project success. These are customers who have already recognized the need to change. They have committed to a project and a project team to develop a plan, drive the change, realize the expected value. But they struggle to align themselves, their agendas, their goals/priorities. They struggle with the project itself, often failing before they started their buying journey. They recognized an opportunity to change, that there was business value to be seized or realized, but they fail to realize it before they even start. As a consequence, an opportunity for us has disappeared. Getting that opportunity restarted is very difficult.
To address this challenge, we have to think of value differently, not just the value of our solution–to be realized at some future point. But the value of helping them solves their problem so they can realize that value and we get our PO.
Just think about this issue from pure selfish motivations–getting PO’s. If 60-70% of projects end in no decision made, we are leaving twice as much real, qualified opportunity unaddressed. We and our competitors are only getting 30-40% of the real opportunity available. There is the 60-70% where a customer has been committed to taking action, but they blow up before they can take action, or before they select a solution.
Making our numbers seems trivial in the face of this! All we have to do is help our customers become more successful in the early stages of their change management projects! We focus on a different type of value, value creation or value in the process.
Of course, this requires changes in what we do and our own capabilities. We can no longer wait for the customer to reach their 57% before engaging them. Many projects with customers having a real need to buy will have blown up long before this. We have to be finding and engaging customers much earlier. We have to be helping them with their project, not focusing just on demonstrating the value of the solution. This means new skills, both in prospecting, change management, project management, and facilitation.
It’s not over yet. What about the biggest part of value that we can create and claim? What about those customers who don’t even recognize the need to change? They may be struggling, knowing something’s wrong but not doing anything about it, except working harder. They may be settling, thinking good enough is good enough, when they are losing share, there are emerging new competitors, and their future is threatened.
From a selfish point of view, these are easy opportunities to spot. All we have to do is look at the underperformers in our markets. Or even those whose performance is OK. We have to be able to engage them in meaningful conversations about the costs of doing nothing. We have to incite them to see the potential value that can be realized. and guide them in the journey to realize that value.
Our perspectives of value can seriously limit us and our customers. The majority of sales people focus purely on price–minimizing the value they can claim in competitive situations. Those that develop rich business justification models are doing better, but aren’t claiming as much value as they could. Consequently, they are missing huge growth opportunities, both now and in the future.
Changing our perspectives, having a much larger view gives us the opportunity to at least double our own business volumes. More importantly, it cements our value and leadership position with customers by helping them achieve and realize more value.
The key issues are: Are you hungry enough to chase this opportunity? Do you have the skills and tools to change your engagement model? Do you have the skills and tools to provide the right value to the customer at the right time?
This article was originally posted to the Partners in Excellence Blog by David Brock on March 2, 2016.
Complex Selling Essentials: Focus, Systems and Talent
Posted by Rick Pranitis in SALES BEST PRACTICES on March 14, 2016
Complex B2B sales are usually characterized by lengthy, high-value buying decisions that involve multiple stakeholders and frequently end in a decision to do nothing and stick with the status quo. But that doesn’t mean they have to be complicated – far from it.
Over-complicated responses to managing the complex sales process have a woeful success rate. Sales people simply don’t see the value in having to enter reams of information into CRM systems that they doubt management will ever pay proper attention to – or conform to processes that they see as doing nothing to increase their chances of winning. And they are right to rebel.
I believe that the evidence is clear: mastering three deceptively simple principles turns out to be critical to winning the complex sale…
1: FOCUS
First, and at the risk of stating the obvious, your sales and marketing activities must be laser-focused on identifying, engaging and qualifying the opportunities that are most likely to want to buy from you. It sounds like a simple principle, but many sales people and the organizations they work for nevertheless manage to squander enormous amount of time and energy pursuing “opportunities” they have little chance of closing.
Focusing on the right issues requires that you identify and target critical pain points that – once they recognize them – your prospects will be forced to address, and for which you have a demonstrably superior solution.
Focusing on the right organizations involves much more than the classic demographics of size, sector and location: it requires a profound understanding of the common characteristics of your most promising prospects and the trigger events that will cause them to act.
And focusing on the right stakeholders involves identifying and targeting the people who are most likely to act as catalysts for change (also known as “mobilizers”) within these target organizations.
Any failure in any aspect of focus simply sets the foundations for failure.
2: SYSTEMS
Even if you’re focused, you can’t afford to leave sales success to chance. That’s why today’s most effective sales organizations have defined dynamic sales processes that mirror the way their prospects make buying decisions. These systems reflect the winning habits of top sales performers, and offer a simple but effective guide to all sales people as to what they need to know, do, use, share and avoid at each stage of the buyer’s journey.
This emphasis on the buying decision process is critical: it forces the sales person to think about what the prospect needs to achieve in order to achieve consensus around the need for change.
The best of these sales systems are based around simple, flexible frameworks rather than rigid guidelines – and they dynamically evolve to reflect the latest learning about how sales success is best achieved.
It’s hard to overstate the importance of having an effective sales process – they can help to dramatically bridge the performance gap between the best and the rest, and ensure that new hires become productive quickly.
Over-complicated or inadequate systems inevitably mean that your sales people will spend much of their time on things that fail to advance the sale.
3: TALENT
This leads neatly to the third key principle: no matter how clear your focus, and no matter how effective your systems, you can never achieve your full potential without the right people on board.
It’s disturbing to observe how often new hires with apparently highly relevant experience fail to make their mark in their new organization. It’s particularly apparent when people get hired out of large corporate into start-ups or expansion-phase companies – the cultural differences often prove to be unbridgeable wide.
Hiring for experience alone clearly isn’t enough. In fact there’s a wealth of evidence to suggest that, faced with a choice between hiring for aptitude, attitude or experience, experience is the least reliable predictor of future success.
In fact, aptitude and attitude turn out to be so important that they simply cannot be left to chance – and this explains the dramatic rise in assessment solutions for both hiring and employee development.
Without the right talent, any complex sales environment will surely fail.
ELIMINATING AVOIDABLE ERROR
When you think about it, these three principles are less to do with striving for perfection than they are about eliminating avoidable error: they are about not pursuing opportunities that are a bad fit, they are about not doing things that fail to facilitate the prospect’s decision process, and they are about eliminating poor hiring or staff development decisions.
Striving for perfection may be an inspirational goal: but eliminating avoidable error (and simplifying your focus, systems and talent management) is usually a far more practical – and effective – strategy.
This article was originally posted to the Inflection Point blog by Bob Apollo on February 23, 2016.
How To Find Your Product’s Remarkability
Posted by Rick Pranitis in SALES BEST PRACTICES on January 26, 2016
When I was a kid, my mother would buy me and my brother popsicles. My favorite flavor was orange. After I finished eating the frozen treat, I would read the joke at the end of the Popsicle stick. It was usually something silly like, “What did Mr. & Mrs. Hamburger name their daughter?” The answer: “Patty!”
Yeah, the joke was pretty corny, but I did something with that joke. I told my brother about it. The creators of the Popsicle inserted remark-ability into their product. I shared that joke like how I share a message from a fortune cookie.
We as humans like to share our messages, opinions, and experiences to others. However, we are more likely to share information that is really interesting rather than information that is not. That’s what remark-ability is all about. We tend to share and market things that we see as remarkable.
Case Study: Blendtec
A blender to most people doesn’t seem interesting at all. The only people I think that will be interested in a new blender are people who love to cook and fitness buffs looking to make a smoothie. But Blendtec makes the blender seem really cool with its YouTube channel, Will it Blend? Its founder, Tom Dickson, was able to find the remark-ability of his product by filming the real-time blending process of products like the iPhone, a remote, and even an Airsoft gun. Viewers stare in awe of how products start to disintegrate piece by piece until they are rubbish. Their videos gets millions of views, and they have over 800K subscribers!
How to Find Your Product’s Remark-ability
In order to make your product share grow like wildfire, you need to figure out what makes it attention-grabbing:
Figure Out What Makes Your Product Interesting
Ask yourself, what about my product is interesting? What features or benefits will grab someone’s attention? Can it be used with another product, or person to emphasize its features? For example, Febreze markets its air freshener by spraying it onto smelly homes and filming the user reaction to show the effectiveness of the product.
Determine If It’s Good Enough to Share
Sometimes the people most attached to the product don’t have the best judgment in whether or not their product is good enough to share. Demonstrate its remark-ability to others to determine whether it’s worthy of attention.
Try to Make It Relevant in Pop Culture
The most remarkable products are the ones that seem relevant to our time. Blendtec grabbed people’s attention by using iconic items like the iPhone to blend. A lot of young people can relate to the significance of the product and are curious to know whether it can blend or not. Buzzfeed uses pop culture and social issues to relate to Millennials so they will be the first person to share their content.
Create a Conversation
Snapple does this better than the popsicle stick. It inserts fun facts into its bottle cap so when a drinker sees it they will be like “Huh, I didn’t know this.” Then the drinker shares the fact with another person starting with “Did you know…?” Snapple is creating a beginning to a conversation through random facts because we have the habit of sharing new information. Buzzfeed creates conversations differently with controversial videos like “10 Things Straight People Say to Gay People.” They are creating these humorous videos in hopes that people will talk about the social significance of it in the comment section.
This article was originally posted to the Business2Community Blog by Beth Romelus on January 5, 2016.
Five Things You Should Be Doing In Social Media Marketing In 2016
Posted by Rick Pranitis in SALES BEST PRACTICES on January 12, 2016
Below are five of the top social media efforts that marketing professionals should consider utilizing next year in order to make an impact and better connect with their audiences.
1 – Engage With Bloggers and Social Media Influencers
You’ve likely heard of brands partnering with bloggers and social media influencers or celebrities, and it’s for good reason – it works. According to RhythmOne (formerly Burst Media) marketers made an average of $6.85 in earned media value for every $1 of paid media spent on influencer marketing in 2014. By all estimations, this is only set to continue or even increase. Nielsen has reported that 92% of consumers trust earned media (such as recommendations from friends and family) above all other forms of advertising; and with ad blocking likely to become a larger problem for marketers in 2016, gaining earned media will become exceedingly important.
2 – Start Live Streaming
Whether you’re B2C, B2B, a non-profit or a personality, live streaming is something to try in 2016. Consider these ideas: B2C companies or personalities can show the “behind-the-scenes” perspective or “the face behind the brand” to humanize themselves and forge connections and loyalty. B2B companies can stream valuable information to their current and potential customers by explaining how their offerings can benefit the viewer, or provide tips to help the viewer do their job with better quality, efficiency or results. Live streaming can allow non-profits to pull on heart strings by showing the real time impact they are making or the hard work and dedication of their team. This is just scratching the surface of the many beneficial uses of live streaming for brands. It’s no longer just Meerkat and Periscope (not to mention Google Hangouts) as options either. There are now companies like blab.im and most recently Facebook, proving the growth of live streaming is likely to continue.
3 – Social Media Advertising
Let’s start by being clear those organic social media efforts, such as posting to your brand’s social media channels or engaging in online conversations, is different than paid social media efforts, such as Facebook or Twitter advertising. They are separate practices that both appear on social media channels, but they co-exist and benefit each other in many ways. According to Forrester Consulting, seeing ads on social media channels is the top way social media users find out about new brands, products or services. Since the majority of U.S. adults use social media, this is impactful. eMarketer also shares that between 20-25% of people visit the store or website after seeing a social media ad on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or Pinterest; and between 14-17% bought the product or service. If you’re not already utilizing this channel, it’s time to develop a social media advertising strategy (and budget) for 2016.
4 – Offer Deals or Promotions
Would you like to develop a larger audience base, gain more customers, and measure conversions from social media in 2016? Treating your social media fans to special offers is a great way to achieve all three. Your loyal customers might connect with your brand on social media because they love you. But eMarketer reports that most people do so because they are interested in buying your product, receiving an incentive (i.e. sweepstakes, discount, or gift card) or to get regular coupons and promotions. Mixing special offers into your content calendar is a way to keep both the brand and consumer happy.
5 – Begin Employee Advocacy Campaigns
Most companies spend a considerable amount of time trying to get external audiences to talk about their brand. But what about activating your internal audiences (i.e. employees)? It’s generally easier and less expensive than other advocacy campaigns, and who better to promote the brand than your own team? As mentioned previously, more people will trust this word-of-mouth marketing (even if coming from an employee) than they will hearing it from the brand itself. Brands such as IBM have succeeded with employee advocacy campaigns and today’s social media managers can get assistance from several platforms that exist solely for this function.
This article was originally posted to the Forbes website by Brent Gleeson on December 17, 2015.
Do Your Questions Differentiate You?
Posted by Rick Pranitis in SALES BEST PRACTICES on July 29, 2015
Critical thinking gets customers out of their box. During my graduate work in training and development, I had the good fortune of taking a psychology class. Toward the middle of the semester, the professor asked me if I would assist him in reviewing more than 20 years of research relating to the way people communicate. At first I was somewhat reluctant. It sounded like a lot of work, and I really didn’t have the time. Then I realized that he had been very helpful to me and very insightful when it came to the material he presented in class, and now he needed my help. So I signed on to help. Most of the material I reviewed talked about open and closed questions.
The goal is to differentiate and brand yourself, gather key information, and move your existing relationships forward. Chances are that the customer views what they are selling as somewhat similar to what the competition is providing.
There are probably few products offered in today’s market that are remarkably different from the competition and that offer significant difference. As a matter of fact, the customer probably assumes that both you and the people you compete against will provide relatively the same thing. Therefore, you are being viewed as the same as the competition, almost like a commodity. Of course you want to establish a strong business relationship, separate yourself, stand out, and become a significant partner in the customer’s practice. To make that occur, you need to engage in relevant dialogue.
During my analysis of 20 years of research on the way people communicate, I came across several interesting articles and studies that made me think a little differently about questions, how they are presented, and the way salespeople ask them to build and develop relationships. These studies focused on the fact that too many recital questions were being used.
A recital question is a question that is asked of individuals that gets them to recite what they already know. Educator Meredith Gall suggested that recital questions get someone to recall information that requires little to- no thinking.
When a customer answers a recital question, he/she recites something they already know and probably have already been asked before in previous conversations. Think of all of the questions that were asked prior to reading this. Do your questions fall under the category of recital? If so, is it possible that you might be boring your customer’s, because you are forcing them to go over the same ground they have been going over with everyone else?
How many salespeople do you think your customer sees in a day? One salesperson? Two salespeople? Could your customer see as many as 10 salespeople per day? For argument’s sake, why don’t we settle on five salespeople a day? That is 25 a week, 100 per month, and more than 1,000 sales calls and conversations per year. The customer hears the same question hundreds of times and gives the same answer.
What makes a better question?
My research suggests changing from a recital question to a dialogue question. Dialogue questions stimulate a complex thinking process involving a longer exchange that solicits opinion and thought, not just a correct answer.
When calling on customers, you want to engage them in dialogue. Your goal is to get them talking at least 70 percent of the time. Most important, when you ask a dialogue question, you create the possibility of change. And change leads to new thinking. Your goal is to craft a question that gets the customer to stop, reflect and respond with a new answer.
This article was originally posted to the Sales & Marketing Management Blog by Charles Brennan Jr. on June 15, 2015.
Why Self Image Matters in B2B Sales
Posted by Rick Pranitis in GENERAL DISCUSSION on April 3, 2015
B2C marketers have long known that the key to customers’ hearts and minds is to make the connection between the brand and customers’ sense of self. Powerful brands (think Apple and Nike) reinforce customers’ positive self-image. B2B marketers, on the other hand, have shied away from the idea, instead approaching selling as a rational, numbers-driven process where the best value proposition wins. Consequently, until recently they’ve paid little attention to the psychological needs of individual stakeholders in a purchasing organization. But that’s changing as suppliers have come to appreciate that companies don’t buy things, people do.
Our research shows that understanding the personal motivations – particularly around identity — of key people in a buyer organization are every bit as important to a sale as convincing them of the superiority of your solution.
This becomes even more important as the number of people involved in buying decisions has grown. Today, between five and six decision-makers typically have to agree on a purchase before it can happen. If a seller doesn’t have an advocate in the organization to help drive the consensus, a so-called “mobilizer” who is personally motivated to champion the deal, the sale can stall (see “Making the Consensus Sale” Harvard Business Review, March 2015).
To find out what might motivate a customer to take on this mobilizer role, CEB surveyed over 4,000 individual customer stakeholders involved in a B2B purchase. By evaluating over 70 different supplier attributes for their impact on customers’ perceptions of value, we found that customers perceive three distinct types of value provided by suppliers. We labeled these company value, professional value, and identity value.
Company value captures all ways in which your offering is perceived to help customers win at the company level — things like allowing the firm to achieve operational goals or increase customer loyalty.
Professional value is all about the ways an offering might improve the individual productivity of employees, for example by making an employee’s job easier or increasing her workflow or productivity.
And finally identity value describes the ways an offering might impact how employees perceive themselves by, for example, boosting their pride, helping them win respect, or strengthening their sense of community. This third category is distinct from the other two. It is less about “how the firm does” or “what I do” than “who I am.”
When we analyzed the relationship between which type of value customers perceived in a supplier (company, performance, or identity value) and their likelihood of advocating internally for the supplier, this is what we found: Offerings with a lot of company value (those that benefit the firm overall) don’t reliably inspire stakeholders in the company to advocate on a supplier’s behalf, becoming mobilizers who will help build the consensus needed to secure a purchase. Offerings that provide professional value (helping an employee do his or her job better), while encouraging mobilizers somewhat; don’t have a particularly powerful effect. But offerings that provide identity value, positively reinforcing a customer’s self image, had a powerful effect on turning these customers into mobilizers.
In short, the most effective way to create internal advocates or mobilizers for your offering is to make sure that – in addition to explaining the company and professional value it provides – you reinforce the ways it will deliver identity value — making them proud and respected, and strengthening their sense of community within the organization.
One of the best B2B campaigns of this is industrial supplier Grainger’s “Get it, got it, good” promotion —exemplified by their “Downtime is a Real Downer” video. Grainger identified production facility managers as their target — the individuals in the organization they hoped to turn into mobilizers who would help build consensus. The campaign connected the benefits of pride in work and having a sense of being king of one’s domain directly to the purchase and use of the Grainger solution. Grainger’s value proposition directly impacts the way the target mobilizer sees himself, building his confidence and willingness to act. Using Grainger’s offering doesn’t just make him feel better about Grainger; it makes him feel better about himself.
Communicating the spectrum of types of value your offering provides – from the company level to the individual level – is important, of course. Each value type has a role in helping to drive the needed purchase consensus. But if you fail to inspire individual customer stakeholders with the promise of identity value – qualities of your offering that enhance their sense of self – they may not step forward to advocate for you. And without them, it will be an uphill battle getting the consensus you need for a purchase.
This article was originally posted to the Harvard Business Review Blog by Brent Adamson, Karl Schmidt and Anna Bird on April 2, 2015.
Salespeople Have to Invest Their Own Money in Their Own Sales Success
Posted by Rick Pranitis in SALES BEST PRACTICES on February 13, 2015
How much are you investing in your own sales success?
Take a second and add up how much of your own money that you invested in 2014 in your own sales education. How many dollars (or Euros or whatever currency you use) of your own money did you spend to learn something new about sales that could improve your performance and enhance your sales skills? How many sales books did you purchase (and actually read?) Did you hire a sales coach? Attend a sales conference? Or take an online class to learn more about how to sell to your customers?
If the total amount that you invested in your own sales success doesn’t equal 1% of your total compensation in 2014, then you have to ask yourself a single, difficult question: ‘Am I really serious about my sales career?’
How Much Are You Prepared to Invest?
In working with thousands of salespeople over the course of my work, what I’ve witnessed is that the most successful salespeople are continually challenging themselves by expanding the boundaries of their knowledge about sales, sales skills and their customers. Through my own informal research what I have found is that the most consistently successful sales reps are those who invest their own money in their continuing sales education, with top performers routinely investing 1% or more of their total pay in self-improvement
Too many salespeople seem content to wait for their employers to provide some sales training a few times a year. They think that it is solely their employer’s responsibility to train them to master their craft. Unfortunately, that is a losing strategy. By its very nature, sales is an entrepreneurial profession. It rewards those who take risks and those who have the discipline to constantly work on self-improvement.
For example, would you invest $17.95 per month for the chance to boost your commissions by 20%? Or, to earn an additional $1,000 in 2015? Of course, you would. $17.95 to earn $1,000? It’s a no-brainer. $17.95 is nothing. It’s the price of three fancy coffees from your favorite coffee house. It’s about $.60 per day.
What is significant about $17.95? $17.95 is roughly the average price of a sales book purchased on Amazon. There are dozens of extremely useful books on sales published every year that offer new insights and strategies for becoming a better salesperson. Would you set aside one hour per week to read one sales book per month if you could learn new strategies and techniques that you could put to use in your selling to help you win more orders and earn more money? Of course you would. Which raises the question: why aren’t you?
Would You Sacrifice One Hour of TV Watching?
Which leads us to another important question about investing in your future: What are you prepared to sacrifice in order to succeed? Would you be willing to forego watching The Bachelor, or any other completely forgettable TV show for that matter, to give yourself an additional 60 minutes of free time each week to read a sales book (if it would increase your chances of earning more money?)
Take the first step. Turn off your TV and invest some time to explore the universe of free sales resources available for sales people that can help boost your career. Read a few sales blogs everyday, attend free sales skills webinars once per month, watch YouTube videos about sales, listen to a weekly sales podcast (there are hundreds) or download and read an eBook, about sales. Through your research identify two or three sales experts who you feel will challenge you to look at your selling from a different perspective and who will challenge you to break out of your mold and try something new. Investigate their available paid resources like sales books, online classes, mastermind groups and sales coaches.
Then commit your time and money to put some skin in the game. Start small. Buy a sales book and read it. Or download the audio version and listen to it in your car. Put your own time and money at risk and I guarantee that you’ll instantly be more committed to wringing the maximum value out of that investment. Because if you won’t invest $17.95 every month to boost your sales and your commissions, then you’re not really serious about succeeding in sales.
This article originally appeared in the Sales Fix Blog on February 9, 2015.
B2B Companies Expand Inside Sales Teams For Efficient, Relevant Lead Follow-Up
Posted by Rick Pranitis in GENERAL DISCUSSION on January 26, 2015
Over the past few years, many B2B organizations have been growing their inside sales teams, spurred by the better conversion rates and lower costs compared to a traditional sales team.
The most recent Inside Sales Market Size Study, conducted by InsideSales.com, revealed that inside sales is growing 7.5%, compared to field sales at only 0.5%. In addition, more than half of B2B sales reps (53%) sell remotely. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data, the number of U.S. non-retail inside sales positions is projected to increase by more than 40,000 per year through 2020.
Inside salespeople are also more likely to meet their quota. The InsideSales.com study revealed that 85% of inside sales people make quota, compared to field sales, where 81% achieved sales goals.
While at one time inside sales was viewed as a more junior role, inside sales reps are now becoming “executive, fluent and able to have those top-level conversations,” said Mari Anne Vanella, Founder and CEO of The Vanella Group, a firm specializing in B2B telesales and lead generation services.
“Today, the inside sales rep has a much more sophisticated skill set and the technology needed to manage relationships remotely,” Vanella said. “While there used to be a clear demarcation between inside sales and outside sales, I prefer to think of it as all just sales.”
In addition, buyers have become more comfortable with communicating through online channels such as email, social media, screen sharing and Skype. “Internet technologies are pervasive, and buyers of all ages and industries are becoming more comfortable with them at every stage of the business cycle, including in B2B sales,” said Jeff Kalter, CEO of 3D2B, a global B2B telemarketing firm.
“Customers have become used to researching products and solutions themselves,” Kalter added. “Many are also comfortable communicating with salespersons via email, social media, and conference calls. Some customers even prefer these over phone or in-person meetings.”
Inside Sales Positioned For Quick Response
While driving more sales at lower costs is key, the fast-paced nature of B2B sales is also fueling the move toward an inside sales model, experts note. In its 2014 Lead Response Report, InsideSales.com noted that if a company attempts phone contact within five minutes after lead submission, the odds that the lead is contacted are 100 times greater than if it is contacted 30 minutes after submission.
“It is often the inside sales team that is best positioned to respond to those leads in the most timely manner,” said Ken Krogue, President and Co-Founder of InsideSales.com.
Kristina McMillan, Director of Sales Development at Five9, a provider of cloud contact center software, added: “The inside sales team has the productivity tools for scoring and follow up, so they can access information and respond more quickly in many cases than the field sales reps, who are often traveling and in meetings.”
Another inside sales trend that is sparking performance is the use of gamification, McMillan said. “When everyone can see how the leaders are doing in terms of responding to leads, it lifts the whole team.”
A more data-driven approach to the entire customer lifecycle is also helping to improve the productivity of the inside sales team.
“Technologically, things have gotten more advanced in terms of identifying hot leads throughout the customer lifecycle,” said Mick Hollison, CMO for InsideSales.com. “Predictive analytics and Big Data are having tremendous impact on helping the inside sales team work smarter and be more productive.”
Analytics have provided B2B organizations with the ability to standardize activities across the entire sales team. “It makes a great deal of difference when you can figure out what works and know the amount of sales that are likely to be generated by that effort,” said Peter Fuller, CMO of Salesvue, a provider of sales automation software. “When you know things such as how many attempts it takes to turn a lead into an opportunity and how many opportunities it takes to reach your goal of closed deals, it helps the entire sales organization, including inside sales. “
Corporate structure and training can also impact productivity of the inside sales team. Some B2B companies have inside sales fall under the sales team, while others are more aligned with marketing operations.
According to the Sales Development Rep 2014 Metrics and Compensation Report from The Bridge Group, Inc., 73% of groups with the sales development role report to sales. “We recommend that this team report to whomever has the bandwidth, passion and capacity to lead it,” said Trish Bertuzzi, President and Chief Strategist of the inside sales consulting and implementation firm.
Whatever department inside sales falls under, there should be a strong relationship with marketing and the same commitment to training as with the traditional sales team, Bertuzzi noted.
“Marketing is particularly focused on the top of the funnel, so it is critical that the sales reps who are making the initial contact with a lead be aligned with marketing even if they don’t report to them,” Bertuzzi said. “They need to be able to articulate the company’s message, and that is the responsibility of marketing.”
This article originally appeared in the Demand Gen Report by Kim Ann ZImmermann on January 14, 2015.
Consultative Selling and Selling Consultatively – Don’t Confuse Them!
Posted by Rick Pranitis in GENERAL DISCUSSION on December 15, 2014
Every once in awhile in any field it is useful to get down into the weeds – explore language, word usage, and other things that go bump in the night. In this case, the weeds involve drawing the distinction between the term consultative selling and the concept of selling consultatively.
As starters, Mark Hanan established the branding of this term in his book Successful Market Penetration: How to Shorten the Sales Cycle by Making the First Sale the First Time (Amascon Books – October 1987). Because of the branding, Consultative Selling has become one of the “ings” in our field like: SPIN Selling, Conceptual Selling and Solution Selling?
Now, why is it worth making this point about confusion in regard to selling consultatively? There are at least two reasons. One relates to the just noted language distinction; the other to an important trend in the world of buying. Let’s first look at the language point.
Language. The failure to draw the language distinction becomes important because it can be assumed a sales model other than the branded one is not somehow as well designed for selling consultatively – and that is clearly not the case. Take, for example, SPIN Selling. The SPIN model for questioning, as well as, the other techniques in the program are fundamental for selling consultatively. We would suggest this is equally true for the best of all the modern day selling models.
In regard to this distinction point, the really important distinction is between all the models which provide help for selling consultatively and those approaches that are mainly about tips, tricks and product pitches. The latter are not about selling consultatively; they are basically about manipulation.
Buying trends. The second point relates to an important trend in the world of B2B buying and it is the strategic reason for making a big to-do about selling consultatively. Recently Ian Altman published a Forbes article entitled – Top 10 Business Trends that will Drive Success in 2015.
In the article the author makes the following point when discussing trend Number 1: “customers don’t value old-school high pressure manipulative sales methods. In fact, many executives say they have decided not to select a vendor because of a negative sales experience. Customers value subject-matter experts. As customers increasingly value subject-matter experts, salespeople need refined consultative skills.” In 2015 and beyond sales teams will need to be able to sell consultatively at a very high level of competency in order meet customer expectations and to differentiate you from the other guys who have gotten the message. This means you have to be very good at the following:
Consultative Selling Skills. Today customers have changed dramatically in regard to their expectations of the role of the salesperson. They are not looking for a product facilitator. They want a trusted advisor that can help bring fresh ideas for redefining their business challenges and new insight for formulating innovative solutions. You have to be able to position the value of your solutions and company for being a business partner helping to solve business challenges. This requires competency in at least three consultative selling skill domains:
- Fundamental consultative selling skills. These are the competencies that are addressed in those aforementioned programs. They are based on great questioning and active listening skills – the ability to determine fit between the customer’s decision specifications and preferences and your capabilities and emerging skills like: working effectively and efficiently as a member of an expert-based team and being able to leverage the new technologies for designing and delivering value-based customer interactions.
- Second-level product knowledge. First-order product knowledge is all about features and functions. The second-order refers to the application of product knowledge to the customer’s business challenges. How do your products individually or collectively solve the problems likely to be encountered by your customer base? How do they impact productivity, risk, expense and revenue? Can you relate a customer story or describe the research that demonstrates your product does what you say it does? And can you fine-tune these narratives based on whether you are talking with a Marketing Manager or Engineer or Chief Information Officer?
- Customer knowledge. Today, customers expect salespeople to know more their company and industry than ever before. They expect sales reps to provide new ideas, imagination, and insights to: manufacture products more quickly, improve product quality, shorten order times, or improve the customer service experience.
Consultative skills. The second set of skills relates back to Ian’s point in the article. Selling consultatively requires more than selling skills; it requires consulting skills. Here is a short list:
- Subject-matter expertise. If you are selling enterprise software, then you have to understand the technology and applications in order to bring the expertise required to help the customer solve their business challenges.
- Business acumen. Being able to integrate a business and economic perspective into customer interactions.
- Adaptive thinking. Coming up with creative and innovative solutions that are not rule-based.
- Computational thinking. Being able to translate vast amounts of data into useful information.
- Trans-disciplinary Knowing how to integrate knowledge and concepts across disciplines and areas of expertise.
As VPs of Sales and Sales Training Directors sit down to explore the training needs for 2015, we would suggest that meeting customer’s expectation in 2015 does indeed require your sales team to be able to sell consultatively. If one buys the notion, then the 2015 sales training for most companies needs to be more than just a little adjusting and upgrading here and there. While it is it is easy to learn tips and tricks; it is extremely difficult to learn to sell consultatively.
This article was originally posted to the Sales Training Connection Blog by Richard Ruff on December 12, 2014
Who Are Your B2B Buyers?
Posted by Rick Pranitis in GENERAL DISCUSSION on November 11, 2014
Do you know who and where your buyers are? What types of content they consume? What their main pain points are? What industry events they attend? Where they spend time on the web? Who makes up their buying committees? These sound like simple questions, but the answers hold the keys to developing essential Buyer Insights which are critical to your Demand Generation Strategy.
If you don’t know the answers to these questions, how do know how to solve your buyer’s problems? Not knowing where your buyer consumes content or their preference for content format will significantly hinder your content marketing effectiveness. If you spend a lot of time and resources on social media, and your target buyers rarely have Twitter accounts, you are wasting your time – no matter how great your tweets may be. Your buyers just aren’t on Twitter. Maybe not even LinkedIn…so don’t assume they are. You need to be sure of it. You would be surprised by the number of marketing and sales executives that are not engaged in social media, including LinkedIn.
According to the 2015 B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends –North America Study published by Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, marketers are not nearly as effective as they need to be when it comes to content marketing effectiveness. Why? Although they continue to invest time and money in content marketing, almost half of those surveyed don’t have a documented strategy. They might have an editorial calendar, or a plan they come up with weekly on the fly, but not a strategy.
Are you one of 48% percent of marketers the study reports that say you have a Content Marketing Strategy, but just haven’t written it down? Come on. This has to be documented in order for it to be effective. You need to spend time and map out the various pieces of content, based on timing, content consumption in the buyer’s journey, not to mention, understanding the strategic level pain points or triggers of your buyer and align it to your content offers.
Before you do anything to improve your Content Marketing Strategy, start with understanding your buyer. You need to do some heavy lifting to accomplish this so prepare yourself.
Start with this short list for your internal and external interviews:
- Sales (Inside Sales and outside reps)
- Customer support
- Marketing
- Sales Engineers
- Customer marketing
- Sales Support
- Current customers
- Past customers
- Lost prospects
Ask your customers what the first step was in their buying process. Ask them who was involved in the process, what issues they were trying to solve, and how long the purchase process took? And don’t stop at customers either. Interview prospects and competitors customers and ask them the same type of open ended questions that will provide you with the necessary Buyer Insights. Ask your teams open ended questions about customers and prospects to understand the questions they are asked during the sales cycle.
Think your customers might not want to talk to you? Give it a try- you will be surprised how many buyers want to share their stories. Your customers will talk to you because they want to help you, help them. After all, in the long run, that is your goal in delivering content, isn’t it? Take the first step to becoming more effective with your Content Marketing Strategy. Understand your buyer – everything about your buyer- and then work on developing a documented, Content Marketing Strategy that aligns to your buyer. Don’t be one of the 48% – aim higher and your revenues will increase as well.
This article was originally posted to the Annuitas Blog on October 7, 2014.
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