Posts Tagged Successful Selling
Getting Back to the Basics – Top Sales Advice
Posted by Rick Pranitis in SALES BEST PRACTICES on July 29, 2013
There are many schools of thought when it comes to sales. You need to wade through all
this information and find out what works for you and your personality. Everyone is different; so you have to be open to finding out new things about yourself as well as the people you are selling to.
Only Sell What you Believe In – This is a good sales advice. You need to believe in the product you are selling. This allows you to be honest about what you are selling. It helps you speak knowledgeably about the product and convince others that it is right for them.
Be Direct – Consumers have become savvier than ever before. Because of this fact, it is important that you are direct. When you try to skirt around issues or concerns it seems as though you are hiding something and that does not bode well for the sale.
Know the Art of Pressure – There is a particular art to putting pressure on people. Mentioning things once in order to cause uncertainty or doubt with current products is good, but don’t bang it over the head. If you keep bringing it up, the client will dislike you rather than trust you.
Learn About Your Client – Do your research. You should learn about your client before you call if possible. You can sell to them better if you know what they want or need.
It’s All About Presentation – Taking the time to build up a presentation is important. The more prepared you are, the better you will come off as well as your products. You want to have all the facts well organized so people can easily follow you and your thought process.
Follow Up! – It can be discouraging sometimes and hard to make a second call but you should always follow up. Taking the time to call back or visit again can mean the difference between making a sale and not making a sale.
Know the Answer or Find Out – Don’t try to flub your way through something, if you don’t know the answer to a question don’t make one up. It is much better to say something along the lines of, “what an interesting question, I will have to look into that for you.” This gives you further reason to follow up.
Work with Humor – Humor is the ultimate ice breaker. It is a good idea to work in some comedy to your presentation as it helps the client identify with you. This connection goes a long way towards making a sale.
Learn from Every Failed Sale – Don’t beat yourself up over a failed sale but rather learn from it. Even a truly great salesperson is not going to be able to make every sale and you should try to figure out where it went off track and learn from that. You can then tackle the problem differently in the future.
Don’t Avoid Questions, Answer – Finally, make sure to answer questions, even if you feel like the answer is not entirely positive. Avoiding questions makes you look untrustworthy and that will not build the relationship necessary to make a sale.
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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How to Take Over a New Sales Territory
Posted by Rick Pranitis in SALES BEST PRACTICES on April 10, 2013
The protocol for taking over a new sales territory depends largely on the type of territory into which you’re moving. Is this a territory where you will, for the most part, be pursuing new sales opportunities? Or, is it a sales territory where you will primarily generate new business through existing accounts with established relationships? In other words, will you utilize the Hunter or Farmer approach? The two role definitions below offer some tips on how to attack each of these new sales territories.
“Farmer” Sales Territory Protocol
“Farmer” sales reps usually work primarily with existing accounts, and take on a quasi-consultative role. They are very customer-centric, and nurture relationships and opportunities from within those secured accounts. They cultivate new sales opportunities through these relationships.
Two things to remember about the “Farmer” Sales Territory:
- You most likely have outgoing sales people who should be consulted prior to taking over the territory. Since the outgoing sales person is a farmer, he or she should be able to offer valuable insight and customer information. It’s crucial you obtain the proper customer knowledge so you’re able to continue cultivating the relationship to the point new sales opportunities can be uncovered and capitalized on.
- The outgoing sales person should accompany the new sales person on a minimum of one meeting per client. It’s essential the transition from one representative to another be handled seamlessly and professionally so the customer is convinced they’re still in the hands of a strong player who will always satisfy their needs and behave in their best interests. This will be to the overall benefit of both the clients’ and sales person’s organizations.
“Hunter” Sales Territory Protocol
“Hunter” Sales People are generally those who continually look to secure new accounts and new relationships. These types of sales people draw their energy from winning new opportunities, and securing new business for the sales organization. They are charismatic, independent, and generate lots of excitement. They continually hunt for the next new sales opportunity.
In the case of “Hunter” sales people, the territory transition can be a bit trickier, and as a result there are more steps you may need to take in order to assure it remains a successful territory in the long run.
- The incoming sales person must spend time with his or her sales manager. It is paramount these “Hunters” know the lay of the land before they go in guns blazing. It’s very possible that the sales manager has some inside knowledge about the territory which is critical to properly managing the territory. Or perhaps the sales person’s predecessor didn’t do something well – good information to have when trying to convert new business.
- If at all possible, the new sales individual should meet with the outgoing sales representative. Granted, this may not always be possible, but valuable information can be obtained during these meetings. Don’t miss this opportunity.
- Finally, the new person stepping into the territory should also meet with the sales operations leader. The sales ops leader will have access to background on details within the CRM system (for example: Salesforce.com) which will further educate the incoming sales person on all of the existing accounts and opportunities in the territory. Additionally, they’ll be able to pull information on the current stage of the sales process for existing opportunities. The client opportunity stage in the sales process is incredibly important intelligence the incoming sales representative should acquire as they start the selling process to the clients in the territory.
Make no mistake about it – the #1 key to success when taking over a new territory is information. Whether you are utilizing hunters or farmers, all sales people must know the customer and know the territory before trying to lock down any new opportunities.
Answer these questions: Who is the customer? What do they buy? How do they buy? When do they buy? What are their most compelling business challenges? All of this information will aid in orchestrating the proper sales strategy, as well as leading the clients through the sales process in the perfect manner that fits their needs (and yours!).
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This article was originally posted by Bryce Record to the Sales & Marketing Effectiveness Blog on April 8, 2012.
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Are We Moving Beyond The Consultative Sale Model?
Posted by Rick Pranitis in GENERAL DISCUSSION on March 21, 2013
If you look back over the last hundred years or so, there have been three or four major shifts in how major organizations sell. Each period was dominated by a specific sales model and best practices for implementing that model.
Clearly the “king of the hill” for the last thirty to forty years has been Consultative Selling. Consultative Selling emphasizes the importance of moving from a product-centric to a customer-centric sale. A focus is placed on doing a superior job in building relationships and uncovering and developing customer needs. The art and science of asking questions is a pivotal skill set.
Now for sure, each business organization and each training company has their own particular twist on Consultative Selling – for example: different questioning frameworks. But the underlying assumptions and fundamental skills are the same.
It is important to highlight, as compared to the product-centric approach, Consultative Selling has proven to be a dramatic improvement – it has worked and worked well.
With that said, if one looks very carefully, it’s possible to discern the emergence of a new model for selling in B2B markets. Like most paradigm shifts the change is not happening everywhere, all at once – over night. Instead, the change is emerging in phases with some markets and companies spearheading the way.
The important point is to be aware a change is happening and to start exploring the importance of the shift for your organization. With this in mind, let’s take an initial look at the new sales model and explore why the change is occurring.
This new sales model maintains a customer-centric approach, but the assumptions about the expectations of the customer are different. Let’s examine that difference.
Some customers are changing from wanting consultative sales people to wanting expert sales people. These customers are becoming increasingly impatient with sales people who consistently start calls with a “discover your pain” discussion. They expect the sales person to have a good handle on their needs and interests before the call. So time in the call can be spent on diagnosing and integrating the problems and on generating alternative innovative solutions which will have a positive impact on the customer’s business.
In order to conduct this type of call, the sales person must know beforehand the economic, political, market, and regulatory trends driving the customer’s business. With this knowledge in hand, they can bring a point of view to the discussion, ask second and third-level questions and work with the customer to formulate a business solution, as opposed to, starting with a basic discovery conversation. Today’s problems are complex and time matters. So customers cannot afford to start at square one to help every sales person understand their business issues.
Anytime there is a paradigm shift, it’s interesting to ask the question: Why now? Usually there are a number of voices speaking out but seldom is there total consensus. But what is common is some trend which defines the change and a match that ignites the change.
In this case it could be speculated the underlying driver is the fact customers in a wide variety of markets are facing the necessity to up their game. Market economics are demanding, competition is tough and getter tougher and a lot of the old answers have been played out.
So business-as-usual is not going to carry the day and changes which are simply incremental may help you to survive but not to prosper. Customers need new ideas they can use to innovate their business and they are expecting their suppliers to help. This business dynamic has been occurring for some time and some companies have gone through transformational changes in order to adjust.
But, what was the match that lit the fire for change in the sales function? Again consensus is unlikely to be found … but here’s something to consider.
The match which started the movement toward Consultative Selling – the key event which brought Consultative Selling to emerge – was the research done by Neil Rackham’s Huthwaite Research Group. This was subsequently turned into the all-time best seller – SPIN Selling. The research provided the credibility and the book provided the how-to.
As was the case forty years ago, a new piece of research has been conducted and a new book has been published to provide the foundation for change. In this case, the research was done by the Sales Executive Council and the book was authored by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson. The book is entitled The Challenger Sale.
It’s always hard to tell whether a new set of ideas are a vanguard for an important change or simply a creative fad for promoting discussions. In this case, you may not want to bet against the former.
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This article was originally posted by Richard Ruff on June 20, 2012 to the Sales Training Blog
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Successful Selling is a Journey
Posted by Rick Pranitis in GENERAL DISCUSSION on February 28, 2013
The sales process is a journey. If the customer doesn’t understand where you’re headed and why they should come along, they won’t. Making a sale should be easy, especially when you have the right product at the right time in front of the right person. But too many people try and make it more complicated than it needs to be, and lose the prospective client in the process.
Here’s five “keep it simple” rules which can keep you on track and help get you to a successful close.
Cut to the chase.
A good sales person doesn’t waste time with filler words. They start talking about their product right away. Here’s an example; a website developer calls your company and starts by saying, “I am glad I finally got a hold of you. It took me more than 10 minutes to find your contact information on your website. My company does web development, and we could help you quickly fix that. Your customers would then be less frustrated and more easily able to contact you. Can I go over the site with you and find out what else you might like it to be able to do?” As the person being pitched, I am now fully engaged in the web developer’s product–because he showed me he did his homework, and can solve a problem I didn’t know I had.
Skip the jargon.
Whether your product is technical in nature or you just tend to be on the know-it-all side of the spectrum, find a simple way to explain your product which anyone can follow. Customers don’t want a lengthy explanation; they want to understand right away. Recently I was looking to buy a new mattress and was confronted with all kinds of features to choose from. Rather than use empty pseudo-technical terms like moisture-wick and memory foam, a salesperson carefully went over why his mattress would last longer, how its structure would keep my wife and me from waking each other with our movements, and why the two different materials on its surface would help us be comfortable in any weather.
Paint a picture.
You’ll not always have the luxury of meeting with your customer face to face. Learn how to describe your product in a way that even someone who’s never seen it can imagine what it is. Recently I worked with a company who sold products over the phone. They have several items which are made of lesser-known wood species, so they can be hard for the customer to envision. They added a new product to the line and I had not yet seen it, but I heard one of the sales reps describing it to a customer as looking like the inside of a tree when it’s freshly cut. I knew immediately that it was lighter in color, had a ring pattern, and a visible grain.
Get curious.
When you speak to a customer, concentrate on finding out about the customer instead of making your pitch. Start by asking open-ended questions, and then by carefully listening to the answers you’ll find you’ll always get further than delivering a monologue. A bank I never would have considered recently landed a meeting with me because the sales person, after hearing I was not interested in changing credit card processors, asked me if there was anything I was frustrated with at my current bank. As it happened, there had been a recent frustrating situation with my current bank and I was mad enough to want to talk about it, and he was astute enough to carefully connect my discontent to how his bank is different.
Make it matter.
Your product may have a ton of benefits, but they’re worthless if the customer you’re trying to sell to doesn’t need them. Be able to constantly reframe your product benefits so the particular customer with whom you’re speaking understands the direct impact the product could have on their world. Our current health insurance broker won my business not because he explained to me how he was going to save me money (which wasn’t particularly a priority for me), but because his product offered a web portal that was able to help my employees clearly understand their health care options, and made my job as the administrator less burdensome. Those were the high priorities on my list.
A good way to think of selling is like a journey on which you are leading your customer. If the customer doesn’t understand where you’re headed and why they should come along, they will either choose not to take the trip, or wander off in a different direction midway through. All you have to do is get them excited about the destination, tell them all the beautiful things they will see along the way, and answer any questions so they feels safe and can enjoy the route.
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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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Creating a Powerful Sales Plan
Posted by Rick Pranitis in GENERAL DISCUSSION on October 26, 2012
Professional sales people have a unique aspect to their job. They have the ability to decide what to do every moment of every day. The need to make such decisions as; where to go, who to see, who to call, and what to do sets a sales person apart from most other professionals.
I’ve often thought that the quality of this decision, more than any other single thing, dictates the quality of the sales person’s results. Consistently make effective decisions, and your results will improve. Make thoughtless, habitual or reactive decisions and your results will be sub-par. One of the ways to ensure that you make good decisions about your selling time is to create a comprehensive sales plan.
So just what is a sales plan? It’s a written, thoughtful set of decisions about the most effective things you can do. A sales plan should be the result of some good thinking, wherein you analyze and prioritize a number of different aspects of your job.
A good sales plan addresses different time durations and different aspects of your job.
Annual planning
Every sales person should discipline himself/herself to an annual planning retreat. Set a day or two aside, every year, to engage in some serious planning. Turn off the phone, shut down the email, and immerse yourself into deep thought about the coming year. Begin by specifying a series of annual sales goals. What, specifically, do you want to accomplish this year in your job? I recommend no more than five specific sales goals. Typically, one of these goals describes the total volume of sales dollars you want to create; another may describe the number of new customers you want to acquire; yet another may relate to the number of high potential customers with whom you want to increase your business. Regardless of what your goals are, an annual, written, specific set of goals is the beginning of a sales plan.
Next, give some thought, and express that thought on paper, as to your basic strategy to accomplish those goals. If you are going to acquire 20 new customers, for example, exactly what are you going to do in order to accomplish that annual goal?
Classify all your accounts by their potential. Rank them in order, identify the highest potential, and then plan to spend more time with the highest potential.
Re-organize your filing system; throw out the obsolete hard copies and delete the unnecessary electronic files.
To do this well, you will need to devote a full day or two. This annual exercise is the first part of a good sales plan.
Monthly plan
Next, you should develop a more detailed plan every month. Produce a one or two page document which contains your specific commitments to the most effective actions. Once again, you are required to analyze and prioritize your efforts in regards to a number of issues.
First, your monthly objectives: What do you want to accomplish relative to the annual goals that you set? If you said you wanted to sell $2,000,000 worth of your goods this year, how much do you have to sell this month? Each of your annual goals should have a monthly component.
Next, you should address your prospects and customers. In order of priority, in which prospects and customers should you invest your time? That priority often takes the form of a methodical and objective ranking into categories – typically A, B, and C – based on potential. The sales plan then describes your plan for coverage of the A’s and B’s.
You should address the CTM opportunities, regardless of where they occur. CTM stands for Closest to the Money. Analyze and prioritize your efforts related to those opportunities within your territory that are closest to the money. What are you going to do to bring each of them to fruition? Specify each, the dollar amount of the opportunity, and what your actions should be.
Your company may have certain key product or product lines that it wants to emphasize. If so, you’ll need to analyze and prioritize your efforts in regards to those product lines. What will you do this month to increase sales of those product lines? What specific actions will you take, in which specific accounts?
Finally, what will you do this month to improve yourself? What classes or seminars will you attend? What books will you read? To which CDs will you listen?
Note that all of this addresses not every action you will take, but rather the most effective actions. You can note these things on a page or two.
Don’t think that you can keep all this in your head, and skip the discipline of writing it down. Writing each specific action and strategy down, whether it’s on a yellow pad or a computer document, forces precise thinking. The written word also commits you to a degree much deeper than if you keep the idea locked in your head.
After you have completed this monthly sales plan, it’s time to schedule your time. Lay out a plan for each day for the next 30 days. Where will you plan to be, and who will you plan to see? Reflect first your priorities from your monthly plan. Then fill in the non-priority calls.
One irrefutable truth about being a sales person is: your days will rarely go completely according to plan. However, without a plan, you will have totally given up the ability to control and manage your time. By having a plan you have something to fall back on, something to refer to, some benchmark by which to measure the constant and urgent demands on your time.
So, there is an annual component to your sales plan, as well as a monthly discipline. But you are not finished yet.
Weekly plans
You need to reorganize and recommit to your monthly time and territory plan each week. Adjust your plan based on what actually happened the previous week. For example, if you didn’t get to see an ‘A’ account that you had planned, can you see them this week instead? Make your adjustments each week. At the end of the week, spend some time planning and preparing for the upcoming week.
Daily plans
Finally, you need to plan each sales call. What do you want to accomplish in each call? What do you need to prepare in order to accomplish it? Again, you’ll be more focused and more committed if you write down a specific outcome you would like to achieve in each sales call. Keep in mind sales is a process, consisting of a series of steps the buyer and seller take to arrive at a good decision. Your planned outcomes should be narrow and specific. Something like: “Acquire the information I need in order to structure a proposal,” instead of “Sell this account.”
The creation of a sales plan, as you can see, is not a simple, one-time event. Rather it is a discipline which involves a commitment of time and thoughtfulness at specific intervals in the year.
It is also not just an administrative requirement, but a powerful tool that enables a professional sales person to consistently make good decisions about the most important decisions s/he faces: Where to go and what to do!
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Six Essentials in Building a Value Proposition
Posted by Rick Pranitis in GENERAL DISCUSSION on October 23, 2012
A great deal of conversation these days is about the way the buying process has changed. Sales professionals are discovering they must step up their game to stay in line with customers’ expectations. One thing that hasn’t changed is the buyers’ expectation for receiving value in each transaction be it goods and services or just conversation. There’s been a good amount of interest in the” Value Proposition” as a method of satisfying this expectation and being a “silver bullet” to sales success.
There isn’t quick fix or an easy answer but you’re going to pursue this path here are essential six things to help smooth your value proposition journey.
1. Create first, communicate second
We often find that there is confusion between creating your value proposition and then how you take it and communicate it during the selling process or through marketing channels.
In my experience, it’s absolutely critical to do the high-level creation part BEFORE attempting to communicate the value proposition to your customers and potential customers. Doing it this way around makes the communication part, and therefore the selling part, so much easier. Suddenly we all become clear about the key messages. They’re obvious, simple, clear and based on reality. One of the biggest problems we come across is good sales professionals doing their best to create value messages in the absence of any wider understanding of where the source of their company value lies. Suddenly, the sales professional is forced to come up with a value proposition based on the latest opportunity – retrofitting their messages back into the rest of the organization. Hard work and almost impossible to achieve – I’ve seen many demoralized sales teams sweating this one.
2. Top down, not bottom up
It’s so much easier for sales people to have a clear, high-level, company-wide, value proposition created, and then they are free to tailor this to specific opportunities, rather than having to make them up from scratch. Also, doing it this way around (i.e. top-down) will reduce your cost of sale as you’ll know which opportunities are worth pursuing and which aren’t.
So the starting point needs to be company-wide, or division, or sector or product group, before translating the messages into major accounts or specific products or sales opportunities.
3. Involve all stakeholders
A value proposition is a promise of value to be delivered and a belief from the customer of the value that will be experienced. And you can’t create this by thinking up some clever words. You need input from many sources including people in your organization and your customers.
4. Understand customer risk
We use the value equation where Cost must also include the risk taken by the customer in choosing to buy from you and your company. Benefits are shown squared because the benefits you discover after going through the value proposition creation process must significantly outweigh the costs:
Value = Benefits – Cost
5. Value is not just rational
During the value proposition creation process, it’s not just the rational dimensions of the client’s organization that need to be taken into account but also the political and emotional/psychological. Look at the 3 dimensions of:
• Rational (price, ROI, speed and feeds, features etc.)
• Political (e.g. how is this going to affect the buyer’s job? How will this value proposition be received by their organization?)
• Emotional/psychological (how does the customer feel about you, your products/services and your company?)
6. Offerings deliver value
You can often achieve a huge surge in value for your customers, with very little outlay, by re-bundling or re-packaging existing offerings.
So, is a value proposition a silver bullet? No, it isn’t, but it will significantly help with lead generation, conversion rates and overall profitability but only if you put some blood, sweat and tears into the creation process first. Mine the silver first, hand-carve the bullet and then aim it at a precise target.
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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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