Posts Tagged Sales Performance Improvement
How to Handle Sales Rejection
Posted by Rick Pranitis in SALES BEST PRACTICES on June 28, 2013
Conventional sales wisdom has it that a sales person must drive through many “no’s” to get to a “yes,” but when considering how to handle sales rejection the better point of view to take might be how to turn those “no’s” into “yes”. By taking a more positive line on sales rejection, you can help yourself overcome the anxiety that can stall your sales numbers. Try the following exercises to support your positive attitude so that you can get to a mindset where you can overcome sales rejection through viewing it as an opportunity to sell better.
Look at Your Accomplishments When Sales Rejection Threatens Your Outlook
People tend to give the most recent events in their lives the greatest influence over their short-term perceptions. If sales rejection has been a recent trial, you may be at risk of losing sight of your past accomplishments and your future goals. You are in control of how sales rejection impacts you, and if you do not want the specter of rejection anxiety to cast a shadow on your sales numbers you should take steps to remember your positive accomplishments.
- Think about recent contracts you were able to leverage, and what you did right to get to that point.
- Keep a file of accolades from prospects, clients, peers, managers, and anyone else who sends you positive feedback so that you have something to refer to to get you over sales rejection.
- Turn your focus to what needs to change as you move forward to keep yourself on track for your long term career aspirations.
Freeze Out Sales Rejection by Arranging Your Day around Preventing It
The times that you choose to undertake your sales activities can have a measurable impact on your ability to handle and overcome sales rejection. Just consider how positive you feel when you are able to end the day with a scheduled contract signing, as opposed to the feelings you might have when you end the day with a series of unanswered or negative answer sales calls. Put yourself in the driver’s seat over sales rejection by looking at how you schedule your time.
- Schedule activities that traditionally have higher rates of sales rejection between more positive experiences such as follow-ups with strong relationships.
- After a successful presentation or close, make the positive boost in energy work for you by making a few cold calls.
- Use the last minutes of your day to wrap up positive tasks, so that a sales rejection just before you close the day does not set the tone for the next morning.
Know that Short Term Setbacks from Sales Rejection Are Just Part of the Picture
It may feel as though sales rejection is somehow filtering through the air when you encounter a series of negative responses, especially when a temporary negative trend impacts your goals for the day or even for the whole week. Do not set yourself back by projecting that negative trend any further than the last call. If you tried your best and are working to improve your tactics for handling sales rejection, your next call can be the one that says yes. Remember:
- A large part of sales is in attitude, and if you make a call expecting to be rejected, you may be encouraging a negative response without realizing it.
- Your short term goals support your long term goals, but are not the whole picture; one less-than-outstanding day does not need to devastate your month.
- Sometimes external events really do lead to a series of rejections when a whole industry is impacted; consider what is happening so that you can adjust to overcome sales rejection.
Your career in sales is what you make it, and your ability to handle sales rejection in a positive light is one of the foundation stones of your career. Never let sales rejection slow you down; stay affirmative and in control by viewing it as another opportunity for improvement.
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This article was originally posted to the Sales Force Search blog by Doug O’Grady on June 27, 2013
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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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The Four Most Important Words in Sales
Posted by Rick Pranitis in GENERAL DISCUSSION on April 23, 2013
In sales, these four words most often will determine whether or not you deliver excellence and in doing so, close the sale:
· Accountability
· Communication
· Comprehension
· Consistency
While not seeking to minimize our profession, these four words can literally mean the difference between success and failure in any sales organization.
Accountability – “The quality or state of being accountable; especially an obligation or willingness to accept responsibility or to account for one’s actions”*
These are powerful words…quality, obligation, responsibility…and day in and day out, everyone is held accountable for something. In most cases, accountability is a two-way street – people and organizations are accountable to each other. For example, a mortgage company agrees to accept the obligation of loaning the outstanding value of a property to a buyer, who in turn agrees to be accountable and pay the monthly payment along with the agreed upon interest. Teachers meet their obligation of providing an education for their students and to teaching the curriculum their superintendent outlines, and students (and parents) are obligated or accountable for attendance, homework, behavior and studying.
Yet, when it comes to work, accountability is what most employees fear most. No one wants to be held accountable, least of all sales employees. This leads directly to communication, comprehension and consistency.
Communication – “A process by which information is exchanged between individuals through a common system of symbols, signs, or behavior; also exchange of information; sign language = road rage”*
Information exchange. It seems simple enough, yet miscommunication takes place more often than not, especially in business. As a manager, it’s not enough to think that your employees know what is expected, nor is it enough to simply tell them. People communicate in different ways and require different resources to ensure communication is remembered and learned. Some learn by hearing, others by seeing, and still others by doing. Effective communication requires all three methods. Tell your employees, show them and then have them do it.
Even so, is this enough? Do people remember after a single communication? In our world today, there is so much “noise” that for communication to truly be effective, it needs to be repeated and recorded. People seeking to drown out superfluous noise practice selective hearing, which further complicates effective communication.
Managers must tell employees clearly what their job is, what the expectation is for their sales and/or customer service performance every day, how they are measured, where to go for more information, how to handle challenges or problems, and even things as simple as how to dress.
Employees must have access to the necessary material, Internet, books and other resources that can serve as references to what they’ve been told to make their jobs easier and to set them up for success. For example, if your business uses the Internet, be sure your employees have full access to internal resources as well as to the customer view of your business as reference tools.
A good example of this is Coldwater Creek, a retail women’s clothing store. When a customer is in a store and requests an item that is not available, a salesperson can immediately go to a computer with the customer, look up the item online, help the customer with the selection process, close the sale and offer to have the item sent either to the store or directly to the customer. In addition, the salesperson can access internal information that tells them if the item is available in another store, is discontinued, will be going on sale, or other internal data that helps them communicate and close the sale. This is an example of service above and beyond with the interest of the customer coming first.
Even the best communication, however, is worthless without comprehension.
Comprehension – “The act or action of grasping with the intellect: understanding”*
Do your people understand what they are accountable for? Most people will answer, “yes,” yet most of the time people make mistakes or fail to meet expectations because of a lack of understanding. Comprehension cannot be assumed. Without a clear understanding, employees either do what they think should be done or what they feel like doing. Rarely, will they meet expectations.
Comprehension comes when an individual has a full understanding of what is being done, how it must be done, and why it matters. To fully comprehend, an individual must be involved in the process. They have to understand the benefit for himself or herself – like the great radio station WIIFM (What’s In It for Me), and for the customer. Using a simple example, if you ask someone to jump off a bridge, 99% will ask why. They need to understand before acting, because it could be their “final act.” The same is true in business. Employees, who understand why processes exist, perform better. Often, simply asking questions will provide a reality check on whether or not an employee understands, and whether or not management is communicating clearly. This is not a dress rehearsal.
Consistency – “Harmony of conduct or practice with profession”*
Another primary cause of misunderstanding is a lack of consistency from one manager to the other, or even by the same manager. If employees are educated on processes and expectations and they are applied inconsistently they are left wondering what to do. How can any employee be held accountable if the rules change day to day? Managers must be consistent. And, if changes are made, they need to start back at the beginning, communicate what employees are responsible for, ensure comprehension and apply the new standards consistently. Only then can managers hold employees accountable and business achieve sales and service excellence.
Have you ever wondered why a veteran airline pilot, walks around the plane before take-off and then meticulously goes through a checklist before starting the plane? Even pilots who are 25-plus-year veterans consistently go through the same process before every flight. That pilot knows – comprehends – that the procedures and processes that have been communicated are in place to ensure that the plane and its passengers arrive safely at a destination, a trip that he as the pilot is accountable for.
Accountability, Communication, Comprehension, and Consistency – when taken to heart and applied by management with their people, these truly are the four most important words in achieving sales excellence.
*Source: Merriam-Webster, m-w.com
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This article was originally posted to the SSM Sales & Marketing Management Blog on April 11, 2013 by Richard F. Libin.
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Do You Have A 90 Day Sales Rep Success Plan?
Posted by Rick Pranitis in GENERAL DISCUSSION, SALES LEADERSHIP on March 25, 2013
Fortune 500 companies have a structured “On Boarding Process” which every new sales person follows. The plan lays out detailed time lines and benchmarks, specific action items and goals. This formal process is great for both the company and the new representative because it leaves nothing to interpretation and establishes shared expectations. The initial training is structured and detailed; giving your new employee the knowledge and confidence that your organization has a plan and intends to succeed.
The problem arises within many of small to mid-sized businesses. In most cases, these are owner-operated companies where the on boarding process and training falls to the owner or manager of a small sales team. Although the intentions are always good, regularly you’ll hear from the new sales person there was no process in place and they spent too much valuable time trying to figure out what to do and how to do it. Secondly, the new rep is often not sure what is expected of them in terms of direction and performance. “Welcome to the company. Here’s your price book, now go out and sell,” is not a recipe for success or a viable On Boarding Process!
Not having a process in place from day one results in the sales person losing direction and becoming frustrated, and the business owner being disappointed and fearing they have made the wrong hiring decision. So how do you fix this problem? First, regardless of the size of your organization, you must develop a written plan of action that lays out specific actions, goals and timelines for the first 30, 60 & 90 days, with a continuing plan for the first year. This may sound like a daunting task but it is actually much easier than you would think.
If you are the business owner & COE (Chief of Everything), you should look for outside expertise to assist you with this process. This can be an inexpensive way to develop a quick start program allowing you to remain focused on revenue driving activities. After all, you most likely hire an accountant, web-designer, and IT firm so why would you attempt to self manage the one area of your organization which directly affects your bottom line? Each dollar in lost sales opportunity is revenue you will never recover.
The complete 90 day plan needs to include goals, activities, product training, competition, prospecting, order processing, customer service, market evaluations, performance metrics, as well as simple things like getting to know your company and its people. Once you have a sales process in place, your new sales rep will be highly motivated, more confident and able to perform better. A detailed template you can use to create your 90 day sales rep success plan is included in the book, “Action Plan For Sales Management Success”.
Consider this analogy; You may be a good driver but will you take the time to teach your son or daughter to drive or would you rather they go to an accredited driving school? Besides, if they learn from a driving school, the insurance companies will provide a discount. It’s a better ROI for you and less stress for your kids. The same theory applies to your On Boarding Process. What’s the fastest way to make a new sales person profitable?
Studies show companies with a defined sales process consistently outperform those with no process. After all, as Harvey Mackay once said, “Failures don’t plan to fail; they fail to plan”.
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This article was originally posted by Robert J. Weese on March 12, 2013 at the B2B Sales Connection Blog
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Coaching – A Critical Element of Sales Performance and Retention
Posted by Rick Pranitis in GENERAL DISCUSSION, SALES LEADERSHIP on March 1, 2013
Most sales managers would agree that coaching their sales teams is key job function contributing to their success. However, when it comes to actually defining what the term “coaching” means, how best to do it, and what are its affects in the long term, each sales manager would probably have a different opinion.
What is coaching? Is training and coaching the same thing? How much time should a sales manager spend coaching? How much time do they actually spend? What type of sales rep benefits most from coaching? Do top performers need it? What are the best ways to coach? Does it affect sales staff turnover?
Leslye Schumacher of Talent Bits and Bytes recently addressed these issues in her blog post, “How Much Time Should Sales Managers Spend Coaching Their Salespeople?” You can read the entire article here. In my opinion, it’s a must read for anyone involved in managing sales people.
In this very well researched article, Schumacher quoted several studies that give much clearer answers to these important questions. Here are some of the highlights:
- To maximize sales results, the optimal amount of coaching is 5 hours per month per sales rep.
- Salespeople that are coached daily outperform other salespeople by 30%.
- What prevents sales managers from coaching is the time spent on administrative tasks, the time spent direct selling, and lack of training in proper management techniques.
- Only 7% of sales managers were found to be effective at coaching without training.
- Core salespeople receiving ineffective coaching averaged 83% of goal attainment. Their performance rose to 102% when they then received effective coaching.
- In regards to retention, top performers were 50% more likely to stay if they received good coaching
The conclusions are clear. These statistics prove what the top sales managers have been practicing for years; coaching works and you have to plan to make time to do it! Not just any coaching, mind you, it has to be effective. Take the time to learn how to “show how, not do for” properly, and you will be a better sales manager for it.
Remember as John Quincy Adams once said, “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”
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This article was originally posted on A Sales Compass on February 13, 2012 by Susan A. Enns
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Never End a Sales Call With; “I’ll Send You Some Information”
Posted by Rick Pranitis in GENERAL DISCUSSION on February 9, 2013
This is especially true if it’s you, the salesperson, who has offered the idea up to send the prospect some information. Although you might think you’ve done a good job, what you’ve really done is give the customer an excuse to end the meeting.
If your sales process requires several sales calls, then saying you are going to send them some information can work — but only if you’ve been able to first uncover the following:
- A specific need the customer has shared with you that you believe you can help them with.
- A level of confidence the customer has placed in you that what you send them they will place value in.
- The knowledge the person to whom you’re going to send the information is indeed the person making the decision.
If you can’t get answers to these three things, then why should you believe that what you’re going to send them is going to move the selling process forward? The odds are far greater the process is going to go nowhere.
For customers this is an easy to way to come across as being courteous, but really what they’re doing is jerking you around. There is no reason for you to go through the effort of doing more work if there is little to no chance of a sale materializing. Sending the customer information may give you a warm feeling, but don’t go kidding yourself. What you’re going to send them isn’t going to do anything.
When you don’t know where the call is going and you’re trying to figure out a viable next step, the process should be:
- Find something you and the customer can agree on.
- Gain the customer’s permission to allow you to follow up with them at a later point in time.
With these two things, you can now go forward and develop a better list of questions you can use to engage the customer. Your challenge on the next phone call or the next meeting is to get the customer to have their confidence in you increase because of your level of competence.
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This article was originally posted to The Sales Motivation Blog by Mark Hunter on October 3, 2012
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The Three Critical B2B Sales Pipeline Metrics
Posted by Rick Pranitis in GENERAL DISCUSSION on November 20, 2012
How healthy is your sales pipeline right now? And what steps are you taking to progressively improve its fitness? Just as your own doctor might measure your body temperature, heart rate and blood pressure before putting you on a personal fitness regime, a pipeline doctor would want to understand your qualified pipeline value, average sales velocity and average sales win rate – and how these factors had changed over time – before coming up with their diagnosis.
Here’s why these three measures are so important…
There are three fundamental things you can do to improve your sales figures: you can generate more qualified sales opportunities, you can shorten your average sales cycles, and you can increase your average sales win rates. Steadily improving all three factors will have a powerful multiplier effect on your sales – and dramatically improve your revenue predictability.
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Bottlenecks and Best Practice
But if you’re not regularly measuring and reviewing all three factors at every level in your sales organization – from each individual sales person through to the whole sales team – you’ll struggle to identify either where your most pressing performance bottlenecks lie or (and this is equally important) to identify pockets of best practice which if adopted more widely would enable you to systematically increase your overall sales performance.
Value, Velocity and Win Rate
Proactive pipeline management involves paying particularly close attention to all three factors – value, velocity and win rate. Together they represent what we have come to regard as the essential pipeline success formula.
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And just in case you wonder whether the effort is worthwhile, a series of studies have shown that organizations that take a data-driven approach to proactive pipeline management show significantly accelerated revenue growth compared to their peers.
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Qualified Pipeline Value
The key word here is qualified. Measuring pipeline value without imposing a company-wide universally agreed definition of what a qualified sales opportunity ought to look like will simply generate misleading, unhelpful and ultimately useless data. And “leads” or “enquiries” don’t count. As I’ve pointed out before, tracking the number of leads generated in the absence of a consistent quality standard tells you nothing and may even lead you to do more of the wrong thing.
You’ll need to craft qualification criteria that address the specifics of your offering and your markets, but at minimum, a qualified sales opportunity must satisfy all of the following:
- Have they identified a clear need?
- Are they likely to buy something?
- Do we have a reasonable chance of winning?
- Would they make a good customer?
Sales Cycle Velocity
Most sales managers would acknowledge that the longer a deal hangs around in the pipeline, stuck at its current stage, the less likely they are to buy. Sales cycle velocity – the amount of time it takes for an opportunity to move from start to finish, and from stage to stage – is therefore an incredibly important predictor of sales success. And if you can shorten your average sales cycles, you have the capacity – without increasing your resources – to sell more.
Given all of this, it always surprises me to see CRM systems that are not set up to report on how long each deal has spent at each stage, or to throw up an exception report when opportunities have been stuck for long than the typical time taken for winning deals to progress. If you’re mot measuring or reporting on this, take an initiative today to deal with it. In fact, if your current CRM system can’t provide it, I would seriously think of changing it. It’s that important.
Sales Win Rate
This is an obvious metric, but even here not all organizations track it with enough granularity to learn the significant lessons this metric can provide. You need to be tracking all possible outcomes. In most complex B2B sales environments, there are at least four:
- You win the deal
- A competitor wins the deal
- The prospect decides to implement an internally developed solution
- The prospect decides to do nothing
You’ll miss the opportunity for incredibly valuable learning if you categorize the last three outcomes simply as “lost”. If you’re not evaluating the outcome of every opportunity into at least these four categories, I strongly suggest you start doing so today – and that you retrospectively analyze recent sales outcomes.
Measure at Every Level
My final recommendation is that you measure these three metrics at every level within your organization, as well as analyzing outcomes by source of opportunity – including comparing different marketing campaigns. You’ll inevitably find outliers in both directions: poor performance that clearly needs to be corrected, and exceptional success that needs to be replicated.
In fact, the latter may provide some of the most valuable learning opportunities: where are you currently being most successful today, what can you learn from this, and how can you enable the rest of the organization to embrace the winning habits you have identified?
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Selling on Price is the Wrong Path to Follow
Posted by Rick Pranitis in GENERAL DISCUSSION on October 17, 2012
Earlier this month Mark Hunter of The Sales Hunter fame came out with a short and “dead on” accurate article about the serious consequences of slashing prices for the sake of making a sale. Now some of you may say this topic is being beat to death. I hear sales people constantly saying they understand and they realize the impact of such actions and so on and so on… But for some reason (and for far too many sales people) when it comes down to crunch time selling price suddenly becomes flexible. So now everybody, let’s review once more why selling on price is not the path to success;
- Somebody will always come along and offer what you’re offering for a slightly lower price than your price. Don’t think for a moment you are the only one who can offer a low price. As soon as you lower your price, you can expect somebody else to do the same.
- The people you sell to at a lower price will be customers who can’t afford to pay you full price. There will always be a group of customers who are seeking the lowest price, and if you think you’re somehow going to turn them into loyal customers who will pay you full price, you’re crazy. These people have zero desire to pay anything but the cheapest price.
- The customers you attract will see value in what you’re selling at the lower price, but will not see value at the full price. Why should they? If you sold it to them at a lower price, then that is what their expectations are built around.
- Customers who haggle with you wanting a lower price are the same ones that will haggle with you over everything. This is the bane of so many issues. Why do anything that would attract difficult customers? A smarter move would be to encourage them to buy from a competitor.
- The lower profit margin you’re making selling at the lower price is not going to give you or your company the level of profit you need to operate. If you’re not making a profit, there’s no way you can stay in business for very long. Not only do you need to make a profit on what you’re selling today, but you need to make enough profit to allow you to invest in building your business for tomorrow.
- You’re worth full price! Do you view yourself as a cheap person? Of course not! Perspective does matter and if you think you can make a sale only by lowering your price, it will become your go-to method. It will become your “normal.” If you want to see yourself successful and capable of being at the top of your industry, then you simply can’t sell on price alone. And you certainly can’t make a habit out of discounting.
Mark’s list is pretty comprehensive and the points are all valid. I would add one more: The customers’ perception of value goes beyond just the product or service you’re offering. That perception extends to you personally. If you’re ever going to be considered as a valued advisor or consultant i.e. sales professional – caving in on price whenever the negotiation process becomes difficult will destroy any creditability you may have established in the eyes of your client. You become just as much a commodity as the product or service you’re selling. And, you can be just as easily replaced by the next shiny bauble or offer which walks in the door.
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Structuring an Effective Sales Funnel
Posted by Rick Pranitis in GENERAL DISCUSSION on October 2, 2012
B2B companies often represent their sales process as a funnel. The sales funnel usually starts with qualified (or “sales ready”) leads and ends with closed-won opportunities. Modern sales methodologies insist on managing this funnel professionally. But how should it be structured in the first place? Obviously, the answer will vary from company to company, but here are three quick tips to hone your funnel.
Meaningful Internal Transitions –a good way to choose the right sales funnel stages is to focus on “meaningful transitions”, i.e. borders between stages representing a shift in the sales process. In this respect, the distinction between “continuations” and “advances” established by the SPIN Selling model is very useful:
- A continuation is an action that is useful in the context of the sale (e.g. sending the prospect a presentation he requested) but does not “move the sale forward”.
- An advance is an action that moves the sale forward (e.g. answering an RFP formally).
This distinction gives you an “internal view” of the best structure for your sales funnel, as advances obviously signal borders between funnel stages.
Meaningful External Transitions – you can also take the “external view” of the transition of opportunities from one stage of your sales funnel to the next. The idea here is to consider your sales process from the perspective of the buyer. What information are they looking for in each stage of the funnel? How do they confirm you have answered their questions? From this, you can infer the content of each funnel stage, hence the overall structure of your sales funnel.
Reflect and Refine – there is another, potentially easier way to find the right structure for your sales funnel: start with the time-tested SPANCO model (see below) and refine it based on the analysis of your funnel dynamics. You are looking for two indicators.
- “Reasonable” conversion rates from one stage of the funnel to another: as a counter-example, a seven-stage funnel with a 55% conversion rate from stage one to stage two would obviously be weird.
- Balanced stage durations: funnel stages should have approximately the same length. This is not a question of aesthetics, but of convenience – it makes identifying potential delays easier and thus reduces monitoring costs.
Over time, pipeline dynamics will reflect both the internal and external view of the structure of your funnel. The key is to keep monitoring them.
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Quick foot note on the SPANCO Model: Just in case you need a reminder, and as I hate making a reference in an article (especially when it’s an acronym) without explanation and/or clarification.
“SPANCO” stands for:
- Suspect – Definition of the target
- Prospect – Identification of the lead
- Approach – Analysis – Evaluation and qualification of requirements, identification of the solution
- Negotiation – Negotiation process
- Closing – Finalization of the order
- Order Ongoing – Account follow-up (up and cross-selling, etc.) Order management and sales monitoring
The SPANCO method offers visibility for each lead and progress at the various phases of the sales process. It also provides you with an ongoing vision of the rate of sales activity in your company.
By clearly identifying the stages in the sales process, you will be able to see the state of your portfolio of leads, so that at any moment, the salesperson (and their line management) can identify where and how to intervene in order to turn a lead into a customer.
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Looking to Accelerate Sales? Get Back to the Basics!
Posted by Rick Pranitis in GENERAL DISCUSSION on October 1, 2012
Feeling frustrated about your current sales results? Trying to accelerate sales can be tough, especially when the economy isn’t doing so well, but it’s not impossible. You don’t have to come up with a completely new game plan to accelerate sales. By sticking to these proven basic simple sales strategies you can increase sales:
Sell “Value”: Focusing your sales pitches on short term value helps people justify buying what you are offering, even in an economic climate of decline. Trying to market a product or service that isn’t necessary in a time when people are trying to cut costs is incredibly difficult. A product or service that offers more immediate value, however, is a lot easier to sell. Make sure your value is expressed in the terms that your target audience uses to describe their business issues and business goals.
Become a Resource: Building trust is key to accelerating sales, especially in a down economy. If you can be a source of valuable information and content, your prospects trust in you will increase. Developing trust and relationships with your prospects will greatly increase the likelihood of a sale. Trust can be built through credibility generated from publishing relevant content, being active and helpful using social media, networking and generating referrals, giving impactful referrals, along with many other non-traditional sales activities.
Personalize: Instead of relying on mass email newsletters, mailing campaigns, or newsletters add an element of personalization to your interactions with prospects. A brief phone call from a sales person could be the key to landing a sale. Personalized contact allows prospects to go from seeing you as a faceless organization to seeing your sales team and company as real people.
Follow Through: Sometimes prospects don’t convert to sales the first, second, or third time you reach out to them, and it can be easy to let these prospects disappear from your radar. Lead nurturing emails, a phone call, or any other way of interacting with your prospects keeps you in front of them and increases your chances of moving forward with the sale. Make sure you set up your sales process in your CRM to allow for regular and value added re-connecting touches with your contacts.
Qualify Your Leads: There are a lot of ways to qualify your leads, but the bottom line is that working with qualified leads saves time, and ultimately increases your campaign ROI. Instead of wasting your top salespersons time with cold calling to unqualified leads, find a way to bring them leads with a higher chance of converting to sales.
It’s the basic and consistent blocking and tackling in sales which yields results. If you do nothing else, keep your focus on these five strategies and you’ll have a much better chance of achieving your goals.
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