My last post mentioned the poll I put up on LinkedIn - What is the most important thing for sales reps to succeed in doing… and I had some very interesting results and a good number of comments. I believe the comment from Peter Styles is most apt for this post… “Sales budgets drive the business therefore achieving sales targets are most critical”. Let’s break this sentence down into the two points:

“Sales budgets drive the business…” uh-huh… makes me think that sales are important part of running the business…

“…therefore achieving sales targets are most critical”… uh-huh again… me thinks achieving target is also important.

Fact is, apart from share capital, loans, overdrafts and the like, the only way the company is going to get the money to do what it wants is through sales… sales are the life blood of the company… uh-oh… so if this statement is true, which it is, then why o why do most companies do their best to restrict selling… I know this happens because CRM systems are implemented; and these systems stifle the sales effort by sucking in irrelevant data for the benefit of management. These tools and the data within them are often so political that the sales professional has no choice but to play the political game in order to keep their job. We want people selling rather than having to worry about politics and keeping their jobs!

If you want to turbo charge your sales effort then you need to take heed of our second manifesto item (there are ten in all).

Manifesto #2… Winning companies treat sales people as entrepreneurs running mini businesses within companies.

This means not only treating them differently, but also providing them with the right tools. Away with the tools that look to manage their activity to giving them the tools to do the job – tools to help them sell… not tools to help manage them. Put a proper tool in place that helps the sales professional to plan how they are going to make their number, provide the tools for developing the opportunity and provide the sales management support that adds value to the entrepreneurial spirit and you will find that more people will hit target… after all, is this not why sales people are employed… to hit target?

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In the absence of a national poll to determine the next government of the UK, I thought I would share the details of a Poll that I have just created on LinkedIn. Although not as important as the big political poll, mine may well be just as controversial and if you wish top participate you can find the poll here.

Choose your response carefully as there can be no recount!

The question and the five possible responses…

“What is the most important thing for sales reps to succeed in doing?”

and the responses to choose from…

a) Excellent Activity Management

b) Accurate Forecasting

c) Achieving Target

d) Effective Sales Reporting

e) Well Managed Territory

It is early days as the poll has only just gone up, but already there is a clear favourite of those who have responded so far and if you don’t agree then make sure you vote!

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Currently, one of my favourite quotes is often attributed to Albert Einstein and his definition of insanity…

“Doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result.”

The reason why I find this quotation so appealing is that it is for our times… most of the world is in recession and therefore for many organisations are reporting that their sales are down. I was looking at the latest quarterly results of a potential new client today to read that sales are forty percent down on the same period last year. This is not uncommon. As a consequence, some organisations are letting many of their sales professionals go… they can’t afford people who no longer bring home the bacon. If you did not know, the idiom ‘bring home the bacon’ is generally agreed to mean… to earn money to live on. If sales don’t bring home the money then the organisation can’t live and so they need to reduce their outgoings accordingly and the place to start is often with those that no longer seemingly contribute. As my wife often says, there is no point keeping and feeding a hen that doesn’t lay; and who am I to argue… particularly if I want my Fitch! My wife keeps many hens and feels no anguish in having to dispatch a hen that no longer brings home the bacon or in chicken parlance… lays eggs. Now that would be doing something different hens producing a full breakfast… bacon and eggs!

The idiom of bringing home the bacon is, it appears, attributed to a church in the English town of Dunmow. In the twelfth century, the church promised a side of bacon (also called a Fitch) to any married man who could swear before the congregation and God that he had not quarrelled with his wife for a year and a day. A husband who could bring home the bacon was held in high esteem by the community for his forbearance. The side of bacon is a tradition that continues to this day with the Dunmow Fitch Trials and is open to any married couple from anywhere in the world. So if you need to bring home the bacon you know where to go.

I don’t have any statistics of how many brought home the bacon, but I suspect that if there was a structure in place to support the individual husbands’ in the art of forbearance then I suspect there could have been many more carrying home their Fitch. Providing support to the individual is just the segue I needed to bring this post back on course and introduce the first of ten manifesto statements that explains my vision for the development of sales productivity…

Manifesto #1… The sum of the parts is greater than the whole. Focus on the individual salesperson, not the organisation.

The traditional way in which many organisations look to improve the productivity of the sales team is to introduce sales tools. All sales tools seem, over the last few years, to have morphed into the ubiquitous CRM platform. CRM is a top down approach and the tool is implemented for the benefit of the organisation not the sales professional. As our Manifesto #1 states; salespeople as a collection of individuals are more important than the organisation as a whole. This is because each sales professional has a sales target to achieve and if you want the organisation to make its number then you have to make sure each and every salesperson makes theirs. Focus on the individual, not the organisation. This is a bottom up approach and it means providing the sales team with the tools that help them do their job, not tools that help the organisation to keep an eye on them.

The problem as I see it is that CRM has had its day. Expecting CRM to provide improved productivity is about as likely to happen as pigs are to fly. (Notice a theme coming through!). Keep pushing in the hope things will be different is pandering to Albert’s definition of insanity… “Doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result.” If an organisation is to survive in this current climate then they need to up their game. People are still buying, there is still money going around, but to get hold of it you need to do something different and the first place to start is providing tools and support that help each and every one of your sales team to do their job. I’ll explain in coming post what some of those tools should be, but for now just remember it’s about focusing on the individual, not the organisation.

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I thought it was about time to dust down my keyboard and put finger to keys, or two fingers in my case, and write a post. It seems like it has been weeks and that is because it has! Although not posting on my site I have written a couple of pieces for the Sales Bloggers Union - Add Value by Asking Great Questions, Sales Process often stifles sales and Motivating the Buyer. I have also written a paper on Sales 2.0 which will be part of an eBook that Brad Trnavsky will be publishing on his Sales Management 2.0 site. My paper is… Sales 2.0 Should You be Afraid or Excited?… and here are my conclusions…

Web 2.0 has the possibility to radically change the way sales systems help sales professionals. The focus will be on providing support to the individual, not the organisation. Over time organisations will begin to understand that if they help the individual sales professional this in turn is helping the organisation. No longer will organisations dictate that the sales system must be used and opportunities must be logged to be included in commission payments. If the focus is on helping the sales professional and the right tools supplied then the information will flow from the bottom up to the top. Management philosophy will also have to change from demanding everything has to be in the pipeline to making sure everyone shows how they are making their number.

Companies will no longer run their systems in their own silos but will open them up to collaborate across the full sales team. Collaboration may even evolve to include trusted people outside the immediate sales team to sales professionals in other organisations that share common customers. Social networking will make this possible.

However, large organisations will find it difficult to adapt full Sales 2.0 because of their investment in their CRM systems. They will instead bolt on applications in the hope that they will get the benefit; they won’t. Unless there is a large forward looking organisation out there that has the vision to be different then it is going to be left to the small organisations to lead the way. Small organisations can become big organisations that can threaten the traditional dominant company… just look at Google versus Microsoft. Who is a threat to whom? Who is using Web 2.0 and Sales 2.0 technology? I rest my case! Large organisations need to be afraid, very afraid. Sales professionals should be excited as there is a whole new world of possibility just waiting to happen.

To find out how I arrived at my conclusion you will need to read the paper in the eBook when it is published and read the whole 10 pages!

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It seems blogging is no longer good enough and Podcasting is the way to go. Although it has been around for a few years the popularity of podcasting is increasing. Now, having just written these last two sentences I can’t but notice a number of words (Blogging, Podcasting, Podcasts) I’ve chosen to use are underlined in red – meaning spelling mistakes. My friend Tibor was recently accused of misspelling in one of his posts (Burn Out Is An Avoidable Ritual In Sales!) and so conscious not to upset the reading public podcasting might be the way to go! Of course Tibor’s spelling was correct; he just used a few well placed ‘u’ that our American cousins omit.

So when talking of podcasting where better to start than Tibor’s podcast – What’s in Your Pipeline – he declares that the pipeline is core to sales success, as in sports, a strong core allows you to excel in all other areas of your sport. As with sports, keeping a strong core or a healthy pipeline is more about discipline and proper execution.  In this podcast he discusses key elements every sales person can put into practice to ensure a consistently healthy and vibrant pipeline. Well said Tibor!

Having a strong pipeline will help deliver success and with success you become one of the top performers – but is money enough to motivate them – not according to Will Fultz. Listen to his dulcet tones on the Sales Management 2.0 website – Rewarding Your Top Producers.

And talking of dulcet tones, then you would be hard pushed to listen to anyone better then Skip Anderson talking about getting your prospects to make a decision and get off the buying decision fence. Listen to his latest in The Essence of Selling series.

I’m not sure how many dulcet tones one can handle at any one time, but Ian Brodie’s from the North of England has a good podcast up about lead nurturing. He tends to specialise toward professional service firms but the advice is relevant for all those looking to build a sustainable pipeline. Sales Excellence Podcast - Episode 4 - Lead Nurturing.

Having earlier mentioned a series… then you can find a number of excellent podcasts by visiting - The SymVolli Sales Performance Management Podcast.

And finally for something different and I always find that I can rely on Karl the sales evangelist Goldfield to do something different. Karl has taken the next step and moved into TV and the next episode of Sales Evangelist TV in the Taking your Message to the Street Series will be “Thinking About Thought Leadership?” The focus will be on what it means to become a thought leader. Learn more about the benefits of building a reputation as an expert in your industry. Visit Sales Evangelist TV on Wednesday, May 6, 2009 at 7:30pm PST.

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On the Firstborder site we have three eBooks for free download: Business Imperative Analysis; Qualification Analysis and the Buying Process. The Qualification Analysis has nearly twice as many downloads as the other two which looks like most people view Qualification as important – and it is – although I will have to say the Business Imperative has helped our customers secure millions of extra revenue.

Qualification has always been important, but never more so in this present economic climate. No time to waste dilly dallying with customers who won’t be buying or won’t be buying from you. Therefore, over the last few weeks we have upgraded our Qualification Analysis and it seems to add more value. There are four stages –

1.    Making Sure the Opportunity is Real.
2.    Making Sure the Customer Will be Buying.
3.    Making Sure We Win.
4.    Making Sure We Close.

Behind each stage are the detailed questions. However, there is one question that I always ask first when I’m doing a deal review with a sales rep. To me it’s important, but not as important as the second question, however the second question has no relevance if the first question is not asked!

The first question to ask is “when is the deal closing… when will they be giving you the purchase order… when will they be signing the contract?” If you get a “I don’t know” then you are in real trouble, but most times you do get an answer… and if you get a date then here comes the second and most important question… “Does the customer agree with you?” When you ask the sales rep this watch them like a hawk, you are looking for congruent affirmation that the customer does agree. If the customer agrees to a close date then they have made a commitment and commitments help confirm if the opportunity is real or otherwise. If the customer can’t confirm then something is wrong. They might not have the power, the opportunity may not be real, they may want the competition to win, whatever it is something is wrong. Get the customer to confirm when the deal is likely to close and if they can’t or won’t then at least you know where you stand and you can then start working on what needs to happen in order for them to confirm the date.

If you do get a date, then that’s great, but it’s still not enough. Now you need to test their commitment to the date and for this we need question number three! Ask them… “How long can they delay the decision?” You don’t want an answer to this. You want them to say they can’t and then give the reasons why they can’t. If they tell you how long the decision can be delayed then guess what is likely to happen… the deal will be delayed… the commitment is not there. In such cases the imperative is missing and at this point our Business Imperative Analysis starts coming in to its own!

We will be running some short webinars on our new qualification and other tools during May onwards. If you would like details then add a comment to this post and I’ll make sure details are sent to you.

Happy qualifying!

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If you look back through my posts you will see that I warned about this recession, depression or whatever it is called some 18 months or so ago… it did not take a rocket scientist, which is just as well because I’m not one,  to realise some things were going badly wrong with the money supply… debt was going to come back and bite us on the bum… if you know what I mean.

So, having predicted that things were going to get nasty, I also predicted that sales forecasting… accurate sales forecasting was going to be an imperative for all sales people… and although I believe I’m right, I don’t believe the pay masters in the many companies want to admit that their forecasting is not accurate.  If they admit it, then there is some admission of failure and who wants to admit failure… the governments don’t, the banks don’t, so why should the top dogs in sales organisations?

However, if we don’t want to own up to lack of forecasting ability, then perhaps we can admit that we need some help with persuading customers that they have a need. Persuading them that they need to do the project we are so desperate for them to sign. Unfortunately having a need is no longer good enough, having a business imperative is the minimum requirement.  And do you know what?… I’ve been giving away the very tool that will help create the business imperative… and I’ve called it the Business Imperative Analysis and as they say in the UK advertising parlance… “it does exactly what it says on the tin”

Now unfortunately for many… not only have they missed the main requirement of selling… accurate forcasting they also prefer to understand qualification before business imperatives. I know this because there has been more than double the download for the Qualification Analysis then there has been for the Business Imperative Analysis.

The Business Imperative Analysis has helped progress more deals to closure than anything else we do… for what is just reported to me it runs in to several hundred million. So the top tip for this day and everyday… without a business imperative your deal is unlikely to get funded. Unfunded deals create havoc with forecasting!

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It was time I introduced you all to Alan Walmsley… an intrepid friend and colleague who has many years of experience in the field of selling software solutions with implementation services. His courageous and boldness comes from his ability to interpret any situation and find the funny side… which I’m sure he would have hoped a prospective customer of his would have had a few years ago… ability to see the funny side.

I can’t remember the year, but it would have been early 1990s when Alan attended a sales call to a brewery in Ireland. As is the tradition with many breweries if you are selling software to help their production process then you would invariably conduct a tour of the brewery and as tradition further dictates end up in the brewery pub to sample the produce… so when the proposal is submitted one can speak from experience in terms of the importance of maintaining quality… one did not want to upset the customer and so one had to partake in the tradition.

Brewery… Ireland… I’m sure most people would now be thinking of Guinness… certainly in the UK, more than likely also in the USA and if their marketing is good as it seems then I’m sure many people in other locations around the world would also be thinking of Guinness… and this is exactly what Alan was thinking when he was standing at the bar at the end of the tour and was asked what he wanted to drink… “I’ll have a Guinness” he replied with a simile of excited expectation… unfortunately he had not just completed a tour of the Guinness brewery, but of the Beamish brewery… the local Guinness rival. At times like these one has to turn to the French language to explain the situation… Alan had a ‘faux pas’ moment… or more crudely put… a gaffe, blunder, indiscretion, clanger, boob or howler. Unfortunately I don’t think the Beamish boys saw the funny side of Alan’s faux pas as the deal did not progress any further… unlike Alan who has progressed well over the years.

Anyhow, enough of the introduction… I was with Alan yesterday and he believes he has a great analogy to explain the reasoning behind reps chasing large deals they don’t close… he asked…

“Why do some sales reps chase large deals that they have no hope of closing?”… having asked what seemed to be a rhetorical question with an inquisitive look he answers… “Why do dogs chase cars they have no hope of driving?”… and without giving too much time for thought he answers… “because they are stupid!”

That’s it… that’s Alan’s thought for the day… stop chasing large deals you have no hope of winning unless you want to be likened to a dog chasing a car.

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Well exhausted with writing to be exact. I’ve just put a post up on the Sales Bloggers Union on pipeline management… a subject that I am a little passionate about and as you will read from the first paragraph of my post I was a little concerend that it was more like a book than a post… but oh well… can’t keep a plethora of good opions under wrap. Read the whole post here… and in compariosn to the post on the SBU… this is a short one!

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Not so long ago… there was a VIP. He was a VIP over the vast kingdom of the Corporation and he was known far and wide within that Corporation for his desire in wanting as much information as he could get. He never really took interest in his army of sales executives, nor did he care to provide them with the weapons to fight… he just wanted information.

Times were good at the Corporation. Sales reps from other corporations were always coming and going and the VIP often spent the Corporation’s profits on new system for extracting information out of the citizens. Everyone new about the VIP’s passion for information… the VIP believed information was power! Now one fine day a couple of swindlers, calling themselves Business Development Managers arrived to pay a visit to the VIP. They knew of his ego satisfying need for information. These enterprising individuals offered to develop him a corporate computer system that would be “fit for only the most enlightened VIP” They explained that their product was so extraordinary, so user friendly and so sales focused that it was useful only to the elite and knowledgeable, and unusable by those who “did not have the intellect to see the value it would bring to the corporation and the corporation’s customers.” They called their new system… Customer Relationship Management… and “it will not only double your revenues but you will also be able to see everything that is going on in sales” The opportunity was just too good to miss… “Take my order,” begged the VIP. “Money is no object!”

The VIP’s assistants in charge of Sales Effectiveness did not want to appear ignorant, unenlightened or negative, so they went along with the desire for the system. They enthused with praise for the time consuming… limited value… data system… that they witnessed being deployed within the Corporation. “Beneficial!” “Inspiring!” “Insightful!” were the words spread around the Corporation to explain what was to come. Knowing the VIP’s temperament, the citizens of the Corporation determined that it was in their best interest to spread the word and play along with the enthusiasm. So, they too, extolled the features and benefits of the fanciful and farcical CRM system.

Towards the start of the roll out of the system there was a glimmer of hope as the VIP began to wonder what he had indeed ordered. However, pompous pride outweighed practicality and sensibility prompting the VIP to organize awareness sessions followed by product training sessions throughout the Corporation. All the subjects were cowed by fear into saying nothing about the absence of value to the sales team. They felt they had no choice but to repeat, as platitudes, the benefits the VIP had already uttered as fact if they wanted to maintain their position within the Corporation.

But one young sales rep, not long out of college and could still be considered a child when it came to politics within the Corporation – wet behind the ears you could say - soon made his mark. When the training had been finished the young sales rep exclaimed, “But it doesn’t add any value to the sales team and they have to spend so much time inputting data!”… maybe wet behind the ears in terms of politics, but he was insightful when it came to having to use the CRM system.

The VIP’s assistants attempted to dismiss his fears, but the unspeakable had been spoken and everyone knew that the CRM system was unlikely to deliver. Despite the exposure of his exposure, the VIP continued to play out the charade, declaring, “The roll out must continue.”

However, where in the past the Corporation could overcome, due the buoyant market, the numb defying lack of value delivered by their CRM system to the field sales team… unfortunately the markets have changed dramatically. Computer systems that not only do not add value, but impeded the sales effort would soon help bring down many Corporations… the Emperor truly had no clothes on… and the VIP responsible had to RIP.

If you are doing CRM… make sure it adds value to the field sales team… don’t just believe the hype and say it adds value… ask the field sales team how it adds value to them… involve them. In my experience if the tools add value the field sales team will use them.

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