Having just flown back from Toronto where time differences, the lack of acceptable Internet speed and socialising with clients, strangers and new friends I thought it time to catch up on my neglected blog. It’s a bit like a passion for going to the gym… once you have it, you feel you are missing out if you don’t get your daily fix… and that’s what it feels like at the moment in relation to the blog. I have therefore done a quick scan of the oracles that I keep a beady eye on…

Mad Hatters and Rain Makers
Low and behold, during my search, I find that my position of eminence in the sales world has moved on to new level of accolade… Ian Brodie of Sales Excellence… that guru of the professional services business development world… has kindly described me as mad as a hatter! What brought my eyes to Ian’s post is that he has set up a Rainmaker Resources portal and I’ve been struggling with Rain Making for a number of months now… Rain Making in the sense of Ford Harding’s latest book… and struggling in the sense of finding it hard work to get through… and my latest attempt to finish the book was while sitting in the hotel bar in Toronto during an extremely heavy downpour… was it the book or a natural phenomenon?… any how review on Ford’s book coming soon.

Pure Genius
The segue to my next oracle comes from Ian… and although he reckons I’m as mad as a hatter, he does say that there may well be some genius floating around my ramblings as well… nice to be loved… anyhow… talking about being a genius… Jim Klein of… From the Heart Sales Training… fame has a great new post all about being a pure sales genius. He is giving you the opportunity to part with some cash to improve your sales IQ… and if that was not enough, if you do part with cash… then you will also receive $3,000 worth of extra goodies. You don’t need to be a genius to work out what a bargain that would be!

Raise your Glasses
Continuing the segue theme it seems that having splashed the cash through Jim’s recommendation and received the book and goodies you may still ask WIIFM… what’s in it for me… that’s you asking WIIFM, not me… and that’s exactly what Karl Goldfield, that sales training genius of the startup sales world has asked in his latest post… well the world was asked bust the coached answered… and I would advise you don a pair of sunglasses before attempting to read the post… Karl has a picture up on this post that shows his west coast credentials… far out man!

Reading Nesh’s stuff can become addictive
And the West Coast theme brings me on to Nesh Thompson’s latest post about overcoming addiction… in bad sales practices. Nesh is on a mission to improve sales performance and he gives some food for thought in not only how to give up smoking, but also how we can get past our own addiction of the status quo.

Are You too Busy?
I find the biggest indictment of the status quo is that everyone is always too busy to do something different. You can come on a great training course, but as soon as you walk about of the door and back to your job… busy takes over. Tim Rohrer the sales loudmouth – his words, not mine, has a great post up about this very topic… Busy, Busy, Busy.

When being Honest… is Stupid
Being busy, busy, busy may sound a bit stupid and that’s exactly what Skip Anderson the sales trainer thinks of people who want to be honest. He makes a great point in his latest post…. To Be Perfectly Stupid!… when he talks about the appropriateness of being honest… it’s a must read!

When feeling Stupid… is Honest
And being honest is what Tibor Shanto was doing when he posted his insightful article about Selling to Procurement. And if I’m being honest I would advise you to keep an eye on Tibor’s blog as he gives some great insights, but more importantly I reckon he is an expert on appointments and prospecting… and I know this after having the pleasure of meeting him while I was in Toronto… we had a great evening discussing various aspects of our different businesses and I was left in no doubt that Tibor has what it takes for prospecting and getting appointments… a skill that will become even more prevalent as the bear bites deeper… and what I know about this subject is comparison to Tibor… makes me feel stupid… and so I’ll be reading and learning.

Finger on the Trigger
And talking about prospecting and getting appointments… Craig Elias the master of trigger events… has another great post up reminding us how to get more appointments and shortening the sales cycle by capitalizing on… would you believe… trigger events.

Enjoy!
And my final roundup of the blog world ended up on Brad Trnavsky’s Sales Management 2.0 site dedicated to the art of sales management and a forum for like minded people. He has some good guest bloggers sharing their ideas.

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My old hobby-horse has not had a decent outing for some time and so after much neglect I thought I would get it out… as they say… and for the uninitiated in the use of the term ‘hobby-horse’ which I’m sure there are very few…. I’m not referring to a child’s toy horse nor the May Day hobby-horses that run riot during the Padstow Obby Oss festival in Cornwall each year… no, I’m referring to my favourite topic… Pipeline Management.

I thought it was time to share my old versus new comparison. Unlike the Padstow Obby Oss festival that is steeped in tradition and has its roots back to the 14th century and has not changed much for hundreds of years the same nostalgic view of things past should not be held out for Pipeline Management.

To improve… to get better… things need to change and if there is anything in the B2B sales arena that needs a damn good change… it has to be pipeline management.

However, before I share my old versus new musings with you I would like to point out that Pipeline Management is also linked to another ancient custom… the quest for the Holy Grail. This legend or piece of mythology (not to be confused with methodology) has its origins dating back to the late 12th century when Robert de Boron, the French poet wrote Joseph d’Arimathe… all in octosyllabic verse… about how he, Joseph that is, used the Grail to catch the last drops of blood from Jesus’ body as he hung from the cross… apparently, as legend has it, the grail has magical powers. Through various routes it, the Grail that is… as legend has it… made its way to Great Britain where some careless soul lost it, or put it somewhere safe and wont tell anyone… people have been searching for the Holy Grail ever since… without luck.

The Holy Grail of the B2B sales world is accurate forecasting… sales directors and managers alike have been searching for years the secret of accurate forecasting… in the belief that once obtained they will be the custodian of ultimate power… they will be in control of their business!

Now, if sales management are looking for the holy grail of sales using the traditional pipeline management methods… then to coin another phrase… they are flogging a dead horse… no matter how hard you flog it, it isn’t going to do any more work… no matter how hard you insist people use the corporate system… they won’t… there are other stronger forces at work that prevent them from doings so… self preservation. Pipeline Management has to be for the benefit of the sales professional first and corporate second… not just for the benefit of the corporate. I’m advocating personal pipeline management rather than corporate pipeline reporting… notice the difference!

So… here are my 22 points of old versus new…yep… 22 points!

Click on the picture to make it larger… it will be easier to read, trust me.

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Call me old fashioned, but back in the year 2002 when I first started having our Sales Pipeline Methodology developed into a piece of software I was adamant that the application had to reside on the sales professional’s laptop. They had to be in control of their own data… this was not a corporate system that anyone can see what they are doing… this was a personal tool… and the sales professional would choose what they wanted others to see… they could sandbag if that’s what they wanted to do. Focus was to replace the personal spreadsheets, not the corporate CRM system.

However, even back then I was being advised by some of the team to consider having the application web based… how crazy were those guys… running an application like Focus on the web!!! It would never work… it would probably have been difficult in 2002 to have the app that I wanted… to look good, to drag and drop, dynamic refresh, to have pop-up windows, to be fast… etc, etc… but now it would be easy.

Now everyone is developing for the web… there’s an avalanche of new sites coming out all the time… and I know of one sterling sales enthusiast who is right on top form when finding these sites… my friend Karl Goldfield… the startup sales mentor has just written about one such site – Web2.0 and Sales 2.0 – Salesconx wants to help small businesses and startups.

With this avalanche of Web2.0 applications that are available I’m not saying that I made the wrong decision back in 2002 because we have a great application and Focus – to coin a phrase – does exactly what it says on the tin… which has to be good… but hindsight is a wonderful thing and as none of us are blessed with it the best piece of advice I have found in lieu of hindsight can be found in another friend’s blog… Skip Anderson’s latest post… it’s not too long, so you should be able to weed our the message from the padding!

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The old adage is alive and well… people buy from people… it has to ‘feel’ right in order for them to buy… and this means all buying is based on emotion. The job of sales is to get it to ‘feel’ right for the customer… and that is where the skill comes in… identifying what its going to take to make it ‘feel’ right and then achieving it.

However, it seems my grand theory of selling does not apply to public sector buying… or so I’ve been told… again… and it seems all that can be done is for sales to follow due process and act as the proverbial ‘walking talking brochure’… what else can they do?… they can’t influence the decision… there is a process that the public sector people have to follow… it’s structured… it has to be transparent… it can be audited by the audit committee… and the people in the process can’t favour any one supplier… the right choice has to be made due to a set of criteria.

The public sector buys differently to the commercial world… I know this because I’ve been told… again. The process has been designed to eliminate the human bit… follow the process and the right answer will be found… the public sector will have value for money…. um… sounds a little like the corporate world…. can’t do, public sector is different.

I have to admit I started writing a comparison of how the public sector buys versus the corporate world… just to show they are not that different. Well, they are different in that the public sector seems to have lots of rules, regulations and laws to make sure the procurement process is open and can’t be abused. I’ve just done some research and have been reading a number of official documents and to be quite honest I got bored… and so I’ve decided to scrap all that comparison stuff from this post and get straight to the point…

At the end of the day there is a tender document sent out… suppliers respond and the public sector employees take the responses and mark the responses… award points for the answers. These points are then multiplied against the predetermined weightings (notice they are predetermined, once set, can’t be changed… clever) and then scores totalled up to give an overall score for the tender. Best and final prices are then submitted by the hopeful suppliers and the decision is given to the supplier who demonstrates the best value… Best and Final Price / Total Points… the supplier with the lowest value score is awarded the contract.

It’s a fool proof system that is fair to all those that participate and it can’t be manipulated because it’s open for scrutiny… however, there is a flaw… the scoring is done by humans… and humans have emotions… even public sector ones. Most questions have answers that are open to interpretation and are therefore subjective… it’s up to the humans to interpret the answer and give it a score… sound familiar?

I want you to think about this… have you ever read an email and taken it badly… and then the person standing next to you who reads over you shoulder says… “oh, it’s not that bad, what they probably meant to say is this…” The person helping you interpret the email has put a positive spin on it, but if they did not like the person who sent it, then they would have probably put a negative spin on it… compounding your already negative thoughts. So what do you think happens with those public sector folks who read your responses… will they put a positive or negative interpretation on your response?… depends on how well they know you… how much they trust you… and if they want you to win or not… um… sounds a little like the corporate world…. and on that point I rest my case… all… and I mean all… buying is based on emotion.

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Here is the fourth post in this series… the final relationship unmasked.

However, before I move on and provide the last definition I thought I would explain that there is a ’so what’ that needs an answer for this series. It’s all well and good identifying the different types of business relationships, but there needs to be a purpose… we need to do something with them, they have to mean something, they need some form of application… but before I dive into the so what here are the details of the last business relationship…

Business Relationship

As I mentioned in a previous posts, I’m sure there may well be more than four, but these are my four…

• Transactional
• Dependable
• Consultative
• Partnership

Partnership

Relationship with Customer: High level excellent relationships. CxO level relationships, middle management and low level.

Relationship Status: Trusted Business Advisor.

Customer’s Knowledge of their situation and how Vendor can help: High in relation to understanding their business. Will have good understanding of the strategic relationship between own business and what the vendor can help them with.

Customer’s Risk: Considered to be high due the nature of looking to solve strategic problems. However, vendor trusted to help manage risk.

Customer’s Expectations of Vendor: To proactively identify and help solve business issues. To have good multidisciplinary relationships. To have problems quickly resolved.

How the Customer Buys: Vendor / Customer or both jointly identify business issue. Vendor submits proposal. No RFP issued.

Vendor’s Value to Customer: Understands customer and their market. Proactive at identifying strategic problems to solve in order to develop customer’s business. Delivers solutions that reduce customer’s risk.

Customer’s Value to Vendor: Will generally have large spending power that is secured in the favour of vendor due to trusted business advisor status. Major projects.

Salesperson’s Value to Customer: High due to strong personal relationships and acting as trusted business advisor. Adds value to people by helping them achieve their personal agendas. Acts as customer advocate in own organisation. Finds the right resources to deliver on promises. Facilitates peer to peer relationships.

Competitive Advantage: Relationships. Understanding of customer’s business. Ability to deliver strategic solutions. Possibly share in risk with customer.

Salesperson’s Value to Own Business: Relationships with customer leading to managing strategic client and thus maintaining predictable high volume of revenue.

Role in Customer Process: Part of the customer team that looks at the strategic development of the company.

Business Relationships… the so what

The diagram below (click on it to get a bigger and better view) shows how the four business relationships can be brought together to form an anlysis of the sales territory. I define a sales territory as a set of managed or targeted accounts from which the sales professional is expected to find, manage and close opportunities in order to meet their sales target. It is therefore about focusing on and managing those accounts that currently provide the greatest return for the resources invested. However, in addition, territory management is about the future and is therefore also about identifying and developing those accounts that will provide maximum future returns.

There are two things to consider if you wish to maximize your return on resources deployed… the first is how much money can the customer spend, if you like… the size of their wallet for your type of products / services - Potential - and what is your Influence. The potential should be measured over a 12 month period and the grading Poor, Reasonable, Good and Excellent will differ from account set to account set. The influence I will cover in a minute, but first I want to explain how this matrix is used.

Territory Analysis - an analogy.

Territory analysis is like going deep sea fishing. You don’t just go out on a boat on to the vast ocean and throw your line over the side hoping to catch something. An experienced skipper of a boat will know where to go fishing… it will depend on the time of year, the weather and the tides and then once you know where you are going you need to use the right bait. The matrix above is about helping you to know where to go fishing… and depending on which quadrant you want to go fishing in… will also depend on what bait you use. Transactional selling is very different to Partnership selling.

Knowing Where to Fish… the proactive part of selling

If you have a number of accounts, broken down into a number of different Decision Making Units (DMU) then you need to know where to go fishing for the biggest returns. Go out to catch more transactional business will not provide the best return for time employed… low influence , low spend… not the best combination. So the first use of the matrix is a quick analysis of where to going fishing. The amount of time it takes you to complete the matrix should be no more than 30 mins… and if you get it wrong it doesn’t matter all you are doing is giving some indication of where to fish… if you find out more info, then make changes.

There is a lot more to using this diagram and how it helps with understanding and managing the territory, however, in the hope of trying to keep this post to a reasonable length… not massively too long… then I will have to leave the further explanation to another day and therefore finish this post on a final thought… business relationships and pipeline management.

Business Relationships and Pipeline Management

Hopefully a number of you reading this will have read my past musings on pipeline management and may well have got the impression that it’s a passion of mine… well, you would be right if you did. Have a look at the diagram below… a diagrammatic view of Firstborder’s pipeline methodology… and see where new deals enter the pipeline depending on the business relationship for that deal. Have a look at the competitive advantage and the primary sales discussion… again, like the diagram above, click on it to get a better view.

I don’t know about you, but if you are involved in a high value business to business opportunity then I know where i would want to enter the pipeline… too far to the right and I have no control and the opportunity will have to sit in the ‘upside’. Come in at the left… right at the beginning of exploring the need… and the opportunity will flow along the bottom… in the ‘commit’… and in your control.

There is a lot more to be said about both subjects… Territory Management and Pipeline Management, but I’ve got you started with two key diagrams… and hopefully started to answer some of the ’so what’ about business relationships.

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I believe in credit where credit is due, although in this current economic climate there is a shortage of a certain type of credit, but luckily it’s not the financial stuff I’m talking about… it’s the recognition stuff.

However, before I move on to the credits… which custom has it says they are often found at the end anyway… and seeing as I’m a follower of custom… I first wish to share a thought…

For many years I have been proffering a really good piece of advice for anyone running a company who is struggling to deal with the numerous issues that such activity entails… get rid of all your customers and all your staff… and you will find life will be a whole lot quieter!

Yep, good advice, but flawed if you want to run a successful company… and so, love them or hate them… a successful company needs both good customers and good staff… nothing new there then.

Now, if you want a really successful company then the most important people to hire are really good sales people, again, not new to those in sales. However, it can be disastrous, financially, if the wrong people are hired… and I’ve seen many disasters in my time. So rather than have no sales people, hire the best. Easier said then done. Which is why I was pleased to read Ian Brodie’s latest blog post recommending… Topgrading for Sales… in which he recommends the book of the same name… which is focused on hiring and coaching to ensure you have only the best sales talent in your organisation.

Equally, Craig Elias in his latest blog post – no-charge company data - recommends JigSaw. Craig’s site is all about Trigger Events… identifying when to talk to customers… and JigSaw helps you identify which buyers to talk to… which means customers!

And so the credits… thanks to Ian for Craig for finding and sharing two excellent resources for helping negate my ‘really good piece of advice’.

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Here is the third post in this series. Thanks to everyone who have posted comments on the first two posts in this series… good additions.

The Four Business Relationships

As I mentioned in a previous posts, I’m sure there may well be more than four, but these are my four…

• Transactional
• Dependable
• Consultative
• Partnership

Have a look at the Transactional and Dependable Business Relationship to compare and contrast.

Consultative Business Relationship

Relationship with Customer: Relationships developed with middle management. Poor to good at best. Relationships developed further while pursuing individual opportunities.

Relationship Status: Solution Architect.

Customer’s Knowledge of their situation and how Vendor can help: Understand that they have a problem. They will be looking to address it or they are unsure how to address it. The problem may not have high enough priority.

Customer’s Risk: Will depend on the project being undertaken. Customer often has trouble accessing it. On strategic projects will often defer to partnership supplier.

Customer’s Expectations of Vendor: To have professionals qualified to give advice in order to solve identified problems. Receive information in terms of benchmarks and previous experiences. To respond to request for proposal.

How the Customer Buys: Customer identifies problem and sends out a Request For a Proposal (RFP) document.

Vendor’s Value to Customer: Help the customer to identify and analyse his problem. Propose specific solutions that are suitable. Provide technical pre-sales consulting.

Customer’s Value to Vendor: High value project based opportunities. Potential to develop relationship to Partnership status.

Salesperson’s Value to Customer: Skilled in analysing and giving technical advice and facilitating others from vendor team to do this. Facilitates customer towards the most suitable solution. Manages sales process and responsiveness of Vendor.

Competitive Advantage: Compete on benefits delivered as part of solution. Fit of solution to requirements. Price of solution versus benefit.

Salesperson’s Value to Own Business: Identification and winning new markets / new customers.

Role in Customer Process: Problem identification and solution provider.

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Legend has it… that it was Archimedes who reportedly shouted… Eureka!… such a simple word that boldly portrays so much incandescent behaviour.

I have been reliably informed, and my sources are impeccable, that the eureka moment came while Archimedes was bathing and he suddenly understood that the volume of an irregular object could be calculated by finding the volume of water displaced when the object was submerged in water. Hiero, that feisty tyrant of Syracuse, set Archimedes the problem of finding a solution to determining the purity of gold. He had some old golden crown that he needed to value. It turns out that if one divided the weight of an object by its volume you have a good idea of its density… which seems to have been a good enough indicator of the purity of gold.

So impressed was he, our Archimedes, with his discovery that he shouted out eureka with such emotion that he overdosed on adrenalin… and to get rid of it… he immediately jumped out of the tub and ran naked down the streets of Syracuse!… that was his eureka moment.

Many years later as I have been reliably informed, and my sources are impeccable, that Chris Whyatt also had a ‘eureka’ moment. Now, I’m not sure if he ran down the streets naked, he doesn’t say, but I do know that the… I have found (it)… moment had a profound impact on his understanding of how to put together the best proposal. He shares his insight with us in his latest post… My ‘eueka’ moment; what was yours?… and it is well worth understanding his eureka moment.

Seeing as he was good enough to share his, I thought I would share mine. My ‘eureka’ moment was understanding that binary forecasting delivered far better results than factored forecasting… the reason… it puts the responsibility squarely with the sales rep to close it… they have to close it because it’s forecast to close… unlike factoring where nothing is forecast apart from a percentage of a deal… and how many of you have won 30%, 60%, 90% of a deal… it’s 0% or 100%.

If you forecast it, then you better put a plan together on how you are going to win it… and as Churchill once said…”Those who plan do better than those who do not plan even though they rarely stick to their plan”.

Now, following on from the eureka moment where the intensity of positive emotion can overwhelm you and make you run down the street naked, there is the opposite end of the scale where intensity of negative emotion can often debilitate one so much they can’t do anything… a condition often related to failure. Dealing with failure is as joyful as taking a cold bath on a cold day… not pleasant… and if you do end up having a cold bath it’s your choice… you got in it. It’s the same rationale that Brad Trnavsky talks about in his latest post on… False Assumptions and lack of Ambition… how we make ourselves fail. He shares some great insight and although he does not mention it… his observation about coaching the sales team could be a ‘eureka’ moment!

There we go… two great golden nuggets from the world wide web, both well worth a read.

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The washing machine broke down yesterday… oh no, I can’t take it any more, not more clothes to wash… no, it wasn’t an emotional breakdown, just a mechanical one, well, actually it was electrical… in a mechanical sort of way. I would be lying if I said the washing machine had an emotional breakdown… you know I’m right, because washing machines don’t have emotions do they… or then again, maybe they do… because ours can get a little temperamental… and that’s an emotion… so maybe they do get emotional… well… then again maybe not!

I’m going to be honest here… well, I don’t mean me… I’m not referring to myself… not that I’m dishonest or not honest… I’m just referring to the phrase, or ones similar, that I often hear sales professionals utter. The problem with it, is that it infers they may have been dishonest prior to being honest… so might as well not use it.
We all know that you should not lie to our customers… well, hopefully we do and therefore we don’t. It’s as they say… it’s not that sales people tell lies, it’s just what they know is not true!… so we need to to honest… honesty is always best… or is it.

As the engineer was repairing our emotionally depressed washing machine he was taking calls from potential customers. He’s a busy chap… he runs his own business… he keeps his customers happy… he’s efficient, reliable and gets the job done… he’s in demand. Our machine broke down yesterday, he came out today… other people on the phone he was telling them he can’t get to them until middle of next week. If that was us, there would have been a few more emotional breakdowns in the household with my daughters’ unable to have their daily fix of clean clothes.

Anyhow, the nice doctor, sorry, engineer explained that he will always make sure he sees his good customers. Those that are new have to wait the normal time… he has to look after his regulars… and then he has to look after his not so regulars (the ones with the more emotionally stable machines)… now with these guys, to keep them happy he tells them that he won’t be able to see them until Monday… he’s waiting for a certain part… just fitted the last one yesterday and he will get the delivery at 7am Monday and will be with them at 7:30… will that do? Customer is happy, they are being looked after… not the engineer’s fault he has to wait for parts.

However, the real story is… he has the part, but he’s too busy to get to them… they are not on the really important list of customers. So, rather than hurt their feelings he told a white lie - a lie that is relatively unimportant and designed to be tactful, polite and keep the customer feeling good. The question is… is this wrong?

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It’s Sunday morning, it’s sunny, I’m still paying taxes, breakfast is on its way and I’m about to do a hard days graft in the garden… and the only thing not dependable in that list is the weather… it’s a weekend… it should be raining! A yoke I often heard when I lived in South Africa… in Cape Town, what follows two days of torrential rain… Monday!

It’s the dependable bit that’s the link to my little intro… it’s the next business relationship that I want to cover in this series of four.

The Four Business Relationships

As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m sure there may well be more than four, but these are my four…

• Transactional
• Dependable
• Consultative
• Partnership

Have a look at the Transactional Business Relationship to compare and contrast.

Dependable Business Relationship

Relationship with Customer: Relationships with low to middle management with depth of relationship good to excellent.

Relationship Status: Product Supplier.

Customer’s Knowledge of their situation and how Vendor can help: Will have excellent experience of Vendor and know capability and product/ services.

Customer’s Risk: Low to medium depending on purchase. Will expect vendor to respond well if problems encountered.

Customer’s Expectations of Vendor: Quality, delivery and support. Will be willing to pay higher price than transactional for the support. Coverage for against potential problems. Depend on relationship to add value.

How the Customer Buys: Transactional to project based. Will probably not issue RFP for projects.

Vendor’s Value to Customer: Provide quality, reliable, responsive service, delivery and products / services. Proactive in identifying products and services that may help customer.

Customer’s Value to Vendor: Vendor attains high level of customer’s spend. Referencable customer. Dependable revenue.

Salesperson’s Value to Customer: Understands the customer and their business. Takes into account the specific needs of the customer. Able to facilitate vendor’s processes to aid customer. Makes sure commitments for products, prices, services, lead times, etc are upheld. Makes it easy as possible for customer to do business with vendor.

Competitive Advantage: Customer views vendor as very dependable and will buy in preference to others.

Salesperson’s Value to Own Business: Optimise relationships with customer while keeping sales cost under control. Maintaining predictable revenue stream.

Role in Customer Process: Helps the customer to buy. Very responsive and can be proactive. Is interface to Vendor to ensure commitments are fulfilled?

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