Research Sets High Water Performance Mark for Sales Operations

In a research report entitled, "Understanding What Your Sales Manager Is Up Against", published by the Harvard Business Review, critical insight was provided regarding the benefits achieved when executives manage their sales operation top-down to a sales and sales management methodology supported by CRM.

The researchers categorized companies into four levels based on varying degrees of process utilization. The four levels were:

1. Organizations who lack a standard process,

2. Organizations who have adopted a process but don't manage to it,

3. Organizations who manage to a process but only monitor backward looking data, and are unable to effectively adapt to changing conditions,

4. Organizations who dynamically monitor and provide feedback on the use of their standard process, and are able to adapt rapidly to changing conditions.

The researchers found that Level 1 - Level 3 organizations were the norm and were significantly outperformed by their Level 4 competitors. They reported the following comparative metrics:

· Accurately targeting prospects: Level 4 performed 75% better,

· Properly qualifying leads: Level 4 performed 110% better,

· Effective presentation of benefits: Level 4 performed 61% better,

· Effectively cross selling and up selling: Level 4 performed 185% better,

· Sell value and avoid excessive discounting: Level 4 performed 143% better,

· Effectively introducing new products: Level 4 performed 103% better.

Adventace SMS™: New Release. New Video.

We are pleased to announce our new release of the Adventace SMS™ application!

Watch the video on YouTube by clicking on this link Adventace SMS Video

Take a closer look at the application on the Salesforce.com AppExchange by clicking on this link Adventace SMS on the AppExchange

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See Our Sales Manager Webinar: Improve Your Opportunity Analysis & Win More Deals

Do your sales people have difficulty being objective about how qualified their opportunities are?  If the prospect can ‘fog a mirror’, do sellers consider the opportunity qualified?  

This often results in:

• Wasted sales time (for you and your sellers)
• Missing out on more qualified opportunities because of the time spent on ‘losers’
• Opportunities that seemingly never close
• False sense of pipeline balance
• Inaccurate forecasts & missed quotas.

During this webinar, you will see how you can:

• Quickly determine where gaps exist that - if left unchecked - will haunt you later
• Make surgical recommendations to get opportunities back ‘on track’ or disqualify them
• Better grade opportunities for improved pipeline balance and accurate forecasts
• Identify skill deficiencies for sellers and put an improvement plan in place.

If you would like to see this previously recorded webinar, just go to Opportunity Analysis Webinar.

Opportunity Assessment - Part 2

There are key objectives that must be achieved from rigorous Opportunity Assessment.  The process must lead to:

• Early identification of gaps, or holes, in an opportunity that, if left unresolved, can come back to haunt the seller and everyone involved in the opportunity down the road after a significant investment of time, effort, and internal resources.
• Agreement to pursue between the manager and seller.
• With that agreement, the manager is then in a position to assign the appropriate milestone, or stage, for the opportunity based on objectivity, not the subjectivity of a seller.
• Conducting high quality Opportunity Assessments helps the seller and manager understand the qualification/disqualification level of an opportunity, and, if done well, is an opportunity for the manager to model the questioning process that sellers should be having in the future with their prospects.
• Surgical identification of the selling skill difficulty or difficulties that the seller has. If a skill has been identified as an area for improvement, a plan should then be put in place to drive measurable performance improvement on the part of the seller.

The solution is a consistent set of qualification questions that sales managers must ask sellers.   These qualification questions are critical and should be asked in the following sequence:

1. What is the buyer’s Critical Business Issue?

• Is it important enough to drive a sell cycle to completion?
• What is the financial impact?
• Are there other people, particularly above the buyer, who are personally impacted because of the problem?
• Are they looking for the buyer to solve the CBI?
• Is there a time frame expected for a resolution?  When?  How long?

2. In your diagnosis, did you discover the reasons for the CBI?

• In today’s operation, why is the buyer experiencing the CBI?

3. For each diagnosed reason for the CBI, were you able to identify with the buyer a well-defined capability so that the buyer can literally see themselves successfully using the capability in a manner that will contribute to the resolution to the CBI?

4. Did you identify other key impacted individuals?

• How are they impacted?

5. Given the other impacted individuals, is your buyer above or below the power line?  

6. If below, did you negotiate to gain access to power?

7. If above, did you discuss and agree on an Action Plan, i.e., the structured sequence of events leading to a buy decision?

From this information the sales manager will be able to identify gaps and actions the seller must take.  S/he will also be able to assign the appropriate stage at this point in the life of the opportunity.

High Performance Solution Sales Seminar

Can You Become a Sales Guru?

High Performance Solution Sales Seminar    February 11-13, 2013 and March 11-13, 2013

Objective

The purpose of the 3-Day High Performance Solution Sales Seminar is to provide sellers with the understanding, and ability, to execute highly effective sales calls and sell cycles in a solutions environment.  Every prospect/customer interaction is too important to be left to chance, so this workshop will provide sellers with the framework, strategies, tactics, and tools to help make them more consistent…and effective.

Description
The foundation of the methodology is a research-based model on how buyers buy.  Further, it assumes the product/service being sold is perceived by the buyer to be either expensive or a commodity.  Attendees will learn how to align with their buyers throughout the sell cycle and differentiate themselves by HOW they sell, not just WHAT they sell.

Focus is put on the discreet steps required to complete a successful solutions-based sales call. Specifically, sellers are instructed in a comprehensive set of sales call processes:

• Opportunity identification. Taking the proactive steps necessary to identify where high probability opportunities exist in an account in order to ‘get in first’.
• Prospecting/Account penetration to initiate real opportunities
• Need development. Getting a buyer to admit a critical business issue and then developing a solution that differentiates you from your competitors
• Determining the value of your solution with the buyer
• Qualification/disqualification at the sales call and sell cycle levels · Gaining rapid access to key decision makers and defining the steps leading to a buying decision
• Overcoming situations where the competition got in first
• Negotiating throughout the sales process to avoid having to discount to get the order.
• How to "pull it all together" to build and maintain a balanced pipeline for long-term success.
• Improving forecast accuracy based on actions completed with your buyer, not gut feeling.

 Great emphasis is placed on how to define, manage, qualify, and control sell cycles. Key topics include:

• Aligning our selling behavior with our buyers
• Identifying and accessing buyers with the power and ability to buy
• Objectively qualify throughout the selling process (identify, and disqualify, loser opportunities early)
• Building a sell cycle control letter to a power person to achieve sell cycle control
• The significance of developing an ‘Action Plan’ with a buyer to help ensure that each activity advances the sale toward closure
• Establishing value for your solution in the mind of the buyer
• The timing and positioning of proposals
• Negotiating for things you want, and avoiding price concessions, to create a win-win situation

Agenda
During this three-day workshop we will:

·         Discuss the key skills and processes of professional selling

·         Learn how sellers can differentiate themselves from their competitors based on how they sell as well as what they sell

·         Discuss how sellers can prospect to build and maintain a balanced pipeline

·         Open a sales call with a process designed to get a buyer to conclude that the seller is sincere and competent and can help them solve a problem or achieve a key business objective

·         Guide the discussion with buyers by using well-designed probing questions in a repeatable conversation format

·         Identify and develop buyer needs in a way that creates a solution in the mind of the buyer that is biased towards your capabilities

·         Help sellers determine quickly when they are not first in an opportunity and what to do to become the buyer’s first choice, or disengage

·         Close sales calls so that the opportunity is effectively advanced

·         Discuss how sellers can work with buyers to define a mutually agreed upon plan of the steps both organizations must take leading to a buying decision

·         See how sellers can maintain control of the sell cycle

·         Learn to defend your price thru effective negotiating techniques 

What you will take with you

·         High Performance Solution Sales Manual

·         Electronic templates to construct custom sales calls and sell cycles

Investment: $1,575.00/person, includes continental breakfast and lunch each day

Location
Holiday Inn
17 W 350 22nd Street
Oakbrook Terrace, IL 60181
(630) 833-3600

Refer a colleague/friend: Receive a $75 Amex gift certificate for each person you refer that attends the seminar.

To register, contact:

Mark Populorum

VP, Americas
630-653-6471
mark.populorum@adventace.com

Opportunity Assessment - Part 1

If every salesperson were equally experienced and adept at assessing the quality of their pursuits, there would be no such thing as “Happy Ears”.  After hours, days, and weeks of prospecting some suspect finally says: “maybe”.  Oddly, the salesperson, in spite of extensive rejection, is the most optimistic person in a company.  A “maybe” sounds a lot like a “yes” and our salesperson is on the attack like a hound after a hare.  As experience has shown, some “maybe’s” are indeed future orders; some are “tire kicker” requests; and some no more than opportunities to provide free consulting to keep a buyer-selected competitor honest during negotiations.  For 90% of salespeople, a “maybe” is an opportunity to do what they most enjoy: selling; and do less of what they don’t: prospecting.  Combine that with a generally buoyant nature and the result is exaggerated expectations about deal size, probability of close, and the buying decision process, including decision date.  If the cost of opportunity pursuit were zero, then we might be indifferent.  Quite to the contrary, the cost of pursuit can be very high both in accounting (proposals, trips to the prospect, marshalling experts) and economic costs (lost selling time, lost time of experts, revenue not pursued).  For these very reasons, organizations rely on the objective and skilled opportunity assessment of sales managers.  Assessment leads to a go/no-go decision to pursue and to the development of an attack plan.  The sales manager is central to the coordination of that plan.  The allocation of finite resources to opportunities that have the highest probability of closing is one of the most important jobs in a company and one of the top responsibilities of the Sales Manager. 

But what happens in most organizations?  Here is a sample of comments we have heard from executives:

Managers need to inspect in a common manner.  Everyone does it differently so results are across the board.

Opportunity assessment and management is done via brute force.

Because we have weak pipelines managers allow sellers to chase anything and everything.

Our forecasts are inaccurate because opportunities we were counting on go into the loss column or experience significant delay.

We end up blaming our products for losses on opportunities we never had a chance to win.

(A VP of Sales referring to one of his sellers) That dog can’t hunt.

We don’t effectively sell our low-end products.  How will we make the jump to selling solutions?  It’ll be like jumping to hyperspace.

High Performance Sales Environments depend on the objective, skilled, and surgical Opportunity Assessment of sales managers. In our next post we'll explore how sales managers should assess opportunities and what the outcomes should be.  Stay tuned!