In my experience the title of this post often causes a lot of confusion particularly with organisations that look to transform themselves from selling products to selling solutions. I have come across various companies in my time that have stated they need to do Solution Selling without really defining what they mean or what they need. Saying you need Solution Selling is in many cases is akin to saying you need a Hoover, when in fact you mean a vacuum cleaner.

Solution Selling
The words Solution Selling dates back to the end of the eighties when Michael Bosworth registered the words ‘Solution Selling’ as a trademark. He had a sales training company that specialised in a certain methodology and he wrote and published a book called, would you believe, Solution Selling. Subsequent to that Michael sold his business and Sales Performance Internal took over the mantle of Solution Selling and I would like to recognise that they have the trademark.

Selling Solutions
Now that we are over the confusion and we are not really talking about a methodology we still have to deal with the idea of selling solutions. Many product focused organisations want to move their people away from selling… products… to selling solutions without really understanding what it takes. Many product businesses start adding services and other products to extend their offering so that instead of one thing they can sell many things… a complete solution… which should not be confused in any way with a partial solution.

A solution can be defined as… a method of successfully dealing with a problem or difficulty… which is a definition I gleaned from the Encarta Dictionary and as such I hope I’m not breaking any Microsoft licence agreement in using this definition…. and therefore following this definition a pencil can be a solution to the problem of needing to write a note. Or perhaps the pencil is a partial solution as a full solution would include the paper… however, the problem was not the lack of paper, but the lack of something to use to write on the paper and therefore the pencil is a full solution after all… confused?… I am and I’m writing this!

Solutions need Problems
In some ways this solution dilemma is very nicely summed up by Bertrand Russell the English Logician & Philosopher (1872 – 1970) who apparently once said…

“The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.”

Or indeed, the other problem with selling solutions is also nicely summed up by G K Chesterton the Novelist & Poet (1874 – 1936) who also apparently said…

“It isn’t that they can’t see the solution. It’s that they can’t see the problem.”

So, if you are selling solutions then you need to link them to problems. Solutions resolve problems. However, in today’s environment linking to just problems is not enough.

Problems need Business Issues
Budgets are getting tighter… justification for expenditure more rigorous… and therefore deals less frequent. If you are in sales and you want to prosper you need to evolve your skills from the ‘walking talking brochure’ to addressing business issues. A business issue is something the CEO and his / her team will spend personal time resolving. For example, the green issue. Many organisations and in particular the large corporates will have a stated green policy. The want to and must be seen to be reducing their carbon footprint. It’s a business issue that leads to many problems, such as the need to reduce power consumption, and each problem can have more than one solution.

In summary… selling solutions… you can start by defining the business issue, then understanding the problems and finding solutions. Or, alternatively you can start with a solution, then understand the problems it is addressing and then link these to the business issue. Whatever way you go you will either start or finish up with addressing the business issue and if you do that you are more likely get the attention of the people who ultimately hold the budget… which can’t be bad… can it?

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It’s a nice catchy title – good to great – and what’s more it only takes a day to understand how to get there… I wish it was my idea, but it’s not because it’s the brainchild of Chris Whyatt. I meet Chris a number of years ago way up North and recently he decided to look me up to get my view on a new thing he was planning. I gave him some feedback and agreed to meet up the next time I’m in his neck of the woods… about 300 miles from where I live. However, unbeknown to me, although Chris’ office is up north, he has moved south for love, not necessarily for the area, although he may love it, but for the affection of a good lady… which means instead of 300 miles he is about 15 miles away. So due to the convenience of living near each other we met up in the local pub (very British thing to do) and Chris took me through his Good to Great Day concept and introduced me to the SalesMAP™ Sales Readiness Model.

I have to say I was impressed by both the concept of a good to great day and the SalesMAP™ Sales Readiness Model which in an alternative vernacular is a sales capability benchmarking model.

Good to Great Day
As the name suggests this is a day’s exercise. It’s a facilitated day for around 10 people covering all levels from top management down to internal sales people… umm… those last few words don’t sound right… down to internal sales people… sounds a tad derogatory but can’t at this moment think of any other way of putting it… so, a good cross section of people from the business are involved in the day.

The day is a facilitated self-assessment against the SalesMAP™ benchmarking model. The team decides what is good now, what great looks like and what they need to do to get from good to great. The gaps are identified, ranked in terms of importance and typically the top 3 are chosen to take forward. The output of the day is a plan of actions, owners, dependencies and timescales.

Now what I think is great about the day (excuse the pun) is that it’s a facilitated session. It’s not a group of consultants that come in and tell you what’s wrong… it’s the people in the business saying what’s wrong and what’s needed to put it right… and best of all, because it is the team that identify all this they are then motivated to put it right… what more could you want… a motivated team with a plan!

SalesMAP™ Sales Readiness Model
It’s not just the facilitation that is good about the day, but it’s also the model that the facilitation is based on. SalesMAP™ focuses on sales operations and enables organisations to understand their current capabilities, measure the gap against their aspirations and identify priorities for change. The model focuses on the following areas of sales operations…

1. Understanding the market (current & target market requirement)
2. Capability & pricing information (quality, accuracy & availability)
3. Creating opportunities (proactive and reactive)
4. Qualifying opportunities (objectively or subjectively)
5. Developing win strategies (price, strategies, solution and differentiators)
6. Proposing & presenting (compelling or me too?)
7. Negotiating & closing (maximising revenue and margin, protecting commercial risk)
8. Reviewing & learning (continuous improvement)
9. People (understanding, skills, time)
10. Sales processes (informal, formal, effective?)
11. Management information & reporting (fit for purpose, asset or liability?)
12. Measuring success (defined, understood, measured and reviewed?)

Each of the above areas of sales operations have been mapped and defined in the model and each stage of the baseline from Unacceptable, Poor, Bronze, Silver and Gold standards have been defined. I like the model.

What next?
Well, unlike Victor Kiam who liked the shaver that much he bought the company… I’m not going that far, but I am teaming up with Chris to offer this unique approach and so will be working together on a number of opportunities. If you want to know more then contact either me or Chris and we would be only too pleased to help facilitate you and your company from good to great!

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Following on from yesterday’s post, here are the guidelines as promised with full colour diagram!…

Show How Making Number
The first priority for managing your pipeline is to show how you are going to make your number - show the plan, show the deals you are going to win, then win those deals… it’s as simple as that!

Recognise the 3 Parts of the Pipeline
In planning how to win you need to recognise that the pipeline is made up of three parts – the Funnel for unqualified opportunities. The Upside for customer controlled opportunities. The Commit for the opportunities you control.

Follow the Buying Phases
The funnel and pipeline have to represent the buying phases – the customer moves from accepting a Need to gathering Requirements then to choosing a Solution and finishing with negotiating a Deal.

Understand Who is in Control
You place an opportunity in one of the four customer focused buying phases and then decide if you are in control of the deal. If you are in control, the opportunity gets placed in the Commit grids, if you are not, then that means the customer is controlling you and so you put the opportunity in the Upside. For example, if the customer has decided to address their need, is currently gathering their requirements and looking at different vendors then place the opportunity in the Define grid if you are in control or place it in the Requirements grid if the customer is in control.

The Four Closing Disciplines
Control of an opportunity comes from developing and using the four closing disciplines – accurate Qualification, developing the Business Imperative with the customer, the customer agreeing that the Value you deliver is superior to the competition and developing and utilising the right Relationships…. I’ve posted stuff about these disciplines before, especially the Business Imperative… and I’ll post more on qualification soon – it’s part 4 of the ‘how to recession proof your business’ series.

Get Commitment for Closure
The most important Qualification question is getting the customer to commit to a close date, or at least a ball park close date. If the customer will not commit to a close date, then something is wrong… you may not know what is wrong, but something is… it’s to do with your relationship, their authority, the real status of the opportunity, etc, etc… further investigation is required… the opportunity is upside at best and certainly not commit.

Follow the Primary Qualification
There are three primary qualification questions for moving deals through the pipeline. To move from Funnel to Pipeline make sure the deal is real. To move from Define to Propose make sure you can win. Finally, to move from Propose to Close make sure you will win.

Time Bound the Pipeline
Sales Pipelines need to be time bound. The Funnel is time independent, the Pipeline needs to be set up for each sales period. If you are quarterly driven, then there will need to be a separate set of pipeline grids for each quarter. Deals closing this quarter are more important than deals closing next… a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush!

Closing Time Frame
Deals in the Close grid should close within 2 weeks, deals in the Propose grid should close within 6 weeks and deals in the Requirements grid should close within 13 weeks. Deals closing after 13 weeks are in the subsequent quarter’s pipeline,

Binary Forecasting
Forecasting is binary – win or lose – and therefore the commit deals form part of the forecast. Show me how you are making your number = closed + commit + remaining run rate. Run rate is all the sales you get that don’t make it to the pipeline – and I don’t mean bluebirds!

Less is More
Pipeline Management is not a numbers game – if it’s anything it is a winning game. The numbers game means at least 3x your target in the pipeline, whereas the winning game requires only 1.5x… less time filling the pipeline, more time closing. The Upside is the numbers game, the Commit is the winning game – the reason you only need 1.5x target in the Commit is because you are in control of the deals.

Customer Relationship
Where your deals enter in the pipeline will tell you the type of relationship you have with your customer. Enter at the last stage and you are probably thought of as a commodity supplier and you can only compete on price. The next to last stage indicates a product supplier competing on product features. The stage prior to this indicates a solution architect that can compete on business benefits, whereas the first stage… getting in before there is a deal to be done, indicates a trusted business advisor where you compete on relationships. Deals entering at this stage should follow the commit route.

Discussion Topics
Where your deals enter in the pipeline will also indicate the type of discussion you should be having. Trusted advisors talk about business; Solution architects about efficiency; Product suppliers about… product and Commodity suppliers have nothing to talk about other than the commercial arranges of the deal.

Personal Value
Your personal value to the customer is also determined from where deals enter the pipeline. Enter at the need stage and you are Exploring business issues. At the requirements stage you help Define. At the solution stage you Propose and at the deal stage you Close. You add most value to the customer at the Explore stage and the least value at the Close stage.

Visual Representation
The pipeline as shown is a visual representation of your sales environment. Deals will move from left to right as time progresses. In fact you can complete a sales review in 15 seconds!… click here to find out how.

Build the Funnel
The most important thing you can do is build the funnel. If you buy-in to personal pipelines then you will be putting in potential opportunities that are a long way out there… opportunities that you would never put in the corporate pipeline as they are far too early… if management see them you only get pressurised to bring them forward. By keeping them in your personal pipeline they are not forgotten… always there as a reminder to progress.

That’s it, hope you find it useful and if you want a copy of the diagram below then leave a comment and I will send it to you.

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I’m working on a full post for this series, but this recession theory of mine seems to be gathering pace… bit like the storm that is hitting the UK at this very moment! Well, it was this very moment when I started writing this post yesterday, but today is today and the storm is dying down… shame the same can’t be said about the recession.

I have been writing about the coming recession since, probably this time last year. I have put posts up on this blog, I’ve added to other people’s blogs, I’ve posted and answered questions on LinkedIn. Some people have agreed with me and others haven’t, however, it seems I’m right as a number of people who know about this stuff seem to be saying that the US economy is now in recession and even those who are optimistic say they US is all but in recession. Unfortunately, even though I’m writing from the UK we are not immune… the old saying… when America sneezes, Europe catches a cold… is so true!

The Evidence
There’s lots of it around and here is a little that I picked up over the weekend…

The US Economist, Paul Ashworth, at Capital Economics says… “the debate is over… the 63,000 decline in non-farm pat rolls in February is near conclusive proof the economy is now in recession”

Apparently, the end of last week, Larry Summers, the former US Treasury secretary said the economy is… “currently in recession”

The chief economist at JP Morgan, Bruce Kasman, has said… “we now think the economy can be described as having entered a recession in early 2008”

However, still, not everyone agrees that America is in recession… other headlines over the weekend…from the BBC…‘Bush insists US not in recession’… well, that’s cleared that up then!

Why you should be concerned
You don’t need me to tell you that you need to be concerned… but I will because it’s my blog and I need to write about something!

It’s simple, a slowing economy means consumers don’t spend and if consumers don’t spend, no one spends. There will be timing differences across the economy, but eventually, in a recession money stops flowing between people & shops, between shops & suppliers, between suppliers & manufacturers and between manufacturers & raw material suppliers. Now, if you are in sales that’s not good.

Selling is going to get tougher, there will still be deals to be won, but companies are going to be much more prudent about splashing their cash… there’s going to be no splashing and there’s not going to be much cash… so you are going to need to win more from less… which has been my key message in this series.

Why Part 3.6
I’m now seeing companies beginning to be affected by the recessionary economy. Last year I saw consumers starting to cut back, and now I’m seeing large corporates cutting back. There is going to be more pressure on the sales pipeline than ever before and irrespective of what your company’s approach to pipeline management is… you need to be prepared. Making your number is going to recession proof your own part of the business. Your management may be doing other things to recession proof the business, such as reducing spending, reducing head count and other equally unpleasant things. So, make sure you are seen as a revenue generator and not a cost contributor.

Pipeline management is going to be the most important discipline in recession proofing you own part of the business and in my experience this is the least understood discipline. Many people think they have it covered, they think this is the prerogative of the company, but it’s not. Give the company what they want in terms of their corporate pipeline and make sure you manage your own… Personal Pipelines have come of age!

I therefore thought I would add this post as part of the recession proofing series – to make you aware that Personal Pipeline Management is going to be the most important discipline in the coming economic downturn… there… avoided the ‘R’ word!

Tomorrow I’ll post my Pipeline Management Guidelines… complete with full colour diagram… something for you to look forward to!

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Deep sea fishing… not my sport, if fishing is a sport, but I have now been out a couple of times by the persuasion of a good friend of mine… and enjoyed it… doing nothing… but I did catch a nice Sea Bass for my tea the last time I went out.

However, one thing, other than the Sea Bass, that I took away from the experience was that deep sea fishing is a good way of explaining what territory management is all about… which is very helpful to me right now because I’m currently in the middle of training a group of pre-sales consultants in the art and science of territory management… these guys have individual sales targets and their management want them more involved in managing their business… helps keep the regular sales guys focused…

…so how to explain territory management?

Deep sea fishing is about knowing where to fish… knowing what fish will be about… knowing what bait to use… and using a little bit of skill to hook the fish. Just going out on the water and dropping your line over the side with any old bait in the hope that you will catch something will not produce the best results.

Within territory management we complete the territory analysis… which is just like knowing where to fish. Understanding the vertical market and current issues is like knowing what fish are likely to be about. Developing your solution discussion points is like knowing what bait to use and the skill required to hook the fish is like developing the entry strategy into the account.

Having hooked the fish requires more skill to land it. The bigger the fish the tougher it’s going to be to land… but that’s an analogy for deal management!

If you want to mange your business… know where to fish… know what to fish for… know the best bait to use… and develop the skill to hook the fish… simple!

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I was with one of my major customers last week starting another programme with a new team to our company when as part of the introductions the sales manager of the team read out 7 emails the company had received, unsolicited, from different customers.

They Were Compelled to Write
It seems these customers felt compelled to write in to express their delight and thanks for the way the company had handled the sales process. Apparently each sales rep had managed to involve their prospect like no other competitor. The customer found the process so rewarding that they just had to write in and say what a pleasure it had been, what a difference it had made to understanding their needs and to say the process was a great differentiator… in what is a very competitive market.

The sales manager told his team that each and every sales rep mentioned had been through our training and had taken to heart the process of involving the customer… each had taken them through the Business Imperative… and each were rewarded with the order.

The Difference that makes the Difference
I don’t think it can get better than that… when your customer’s customers praise the result of your work… everyone feels good! I have said it before… the Business Imperative can be the difference that makes the difference… and you can download a free copy from here… but only for a limited time.

I have had up our site for the last year three eBooks for free download. Qualification Analysis, Business Imperative Analysis and the Buying Process. Interestingly the Qualification has had twice as many downloads as the Business Imperative, yet the Business Imperative has been the greatest differentiator in the way people sell. This example is the typical response… other customers of ours have had similar experiences. Some of our customers’ customers have been to our site and downloaded the Business Imperative because they want to use the process for their own internal projects.

Limited Availability
If you wanted to have a free copy of the tool then please feel free to download it. As mentioned we have had the three tools up for free for the last 12 months but we will be stopping this free access soon. We will be updating the tools and posting new ones, but we will be making a small charge for each download… it seems our kids want presents for birthdays and Christmas!

However, if you have already registered or register now… “Get an email when the next eBook is available”… then you will continue to receive our eBooks for free as they are released. This registration will be taken down when we revamp this part of the site… so register now… otherwise feel free to contribute to the kids’ present fund!

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I am a guest blogger on Karl Goldfield’s excellent blog… Coaching Sales Champions… and I was talking to Karl at the beginning of the week and he wanted to know why I went missing during December! Well… I didn’t go missing, just not blogging… and so I was telling him about the pressure of work, lots to do, working late, etc… which took away my focus for blogging… it sounds like a lot of excuses, but it’s the truth… however, today I have a new excuse… catastrophic loss of power… yep, some power cable somewhere decided to stop working and it took out the electricity in our village… no spark to be found anywhere… last night our only light and warmth was from a few candles. How we managed before electricity I just don’t know. Although the central heating is gas, we need the electricity to pump the water around, so no heating. No television, so we had to talk to each other. No toaster, so no toast, so had to have cereal for breakfast… no hot water, so no washing… and you don’t want to know more about that I assure you! The problem is we take for granted that the electricity will be there and it’s a huge shock (no pun intended) when it is no longer there… a bit like deal qualification.

Qualify Your Deals… how shocking!
Just like my electricity experience where we take it for granted that it’s going to be there, many of us take it for granted that the customer is going to buy… and when they don’t, it’s a huge shock. However, the great thing about not qualifying is that you can spend most of the quarter with a rather good pipeline in pure blissful ignorance that the deals are not actually going to close… it stops all that worry about how you are going to make your number… however, you aren’t going to make any money either and the limited resources you do have will have been working on the wrong deals… and so you transform from being thought of as a revenue generator to a cost contributor… not a good place to be particularly with a recession looming. Therefore an important part of recession proofing your business is accurate and thorough qualification.
Justification
The justification for qualification is to ensure that you’re working on the right deals at the right time. Too much effort on a deal too early is a waste of effort – effort that should be used elsewhere to close another deal. Qualification, therefore, is about prioritising sales opportunities. Prioritising helps you determine whether the opportunity is real, whether the customer has the means and desire to buy, and whether you want to pursue. Let’s face it, you have limited resources at your disposal, so you want to make sure you use those resources for maximum return. You want to hit your target and make money.

Also, if your pipeline is full of flaky deals you want to know early so you can change from trying to manage the deals to finding real deals and the sooner this is the done the better your chances of hitting target.

The Process
Qualification begins with some initial research about the customer but the bulk of the work will come down to asking questions. Remember, your value to the customer is not measured by what you know about your products, but by the questions that you ask. Ask good questions that make the customer think and you’ll be invited back, I guarantee it. Asking qualifying questions is the quickest way to progress a deal to closure.

“Is the opportunity qualified?” may seem to imply that qualification is a one-off activity that, once done, is, well, finished. You tick the box and move on. Well, it’s not a one-off activity but a continuous process and the qualification is different depending on where you are in the customer’s buying process. (If you haven’t read the First Border article on ‘The Buying Process’, this could be a good time to take a look.) Qualification is about focusing on the customer’s buying process, not your selling process. You also need to recognise the four areas to qualify commercial aspects; business imperative, selection criteria, and relationships.

Commercial Aspects
The commercial aspects are what most people typically look at when they’re qualifying. Is there a budget? Can they spend? Who signs it off? And so on. These are important questions but they only become relevant if there is a business imperative.

Business Imperative
Business imperative is about understanding the business need. Satisfied needs don’t motivate: it is only unsatisfied needs that motivate people in business to buy. If you don’t understand the customer’s business imperative for your solution then you can’t hope to achieve direct influence over their thinking. At best you will have indirect influence – spray and pray, hoping something will stick. You end up pitching your product, telling them what it does, what colour it comes in, and then how much it will cost them. You’re leaving it up to them to make the connections to their business need. Market stall holders do the same thing… “roll up, roll up, big and juicy…”!

The business imperative linked to the commercial aspects will help you answer the question… Is It Real?

Selection Criteria
The selection criteria focus on how the customer is going to make the decision. You’ll look key technical, political, and commercial requirements, along with the perceived benefit of the proposed solution. Most people focus on the technical requirements by trying to match their solution to get a fit. However, you can often find yourself disadvantaged because your competitors may have a better fit against these particular requirements. If this is the case, you need to reshape the requirements and you can really only do this effectively if you understand the business imperative. Remember, however, that when it comes to solution selling the customer will buy people first, the organisation they represent second, and the solution last. That means that good relationships are the key to the success of selling. You all know this, of course, but do you continually practise developing the required width and depth of relationships within an account?

The selection criteria linked to the commercial aspects will help you answer the question… Can We Win?

Relationships
So, if the old sales adage that people buy from people is true, your main investment in the selling process has to be made in developing excellent relationships. It’s through relationships that you can influence the customer’s decision making process. It’s through relationships that you discover where you stand in the deal, where your competition stands in the deal, and what you must do to win the business. To develop excellent relationships you have to give something in return. You do this by understanding the customer’s business and asking tough questions that force the customer to think. You
add value by asking questions. You also need to take time to understand the perceived risk for the customer. Those making the decision may well have their jobs on the line if the wrong decision is made. Then again, there may also be career development opportunities if the right decision is made.

This time, if you link the commercial aspects with the relationships then this will help you answer the question… We Will Win?

Qualification Questions
I often get accused of writing long posts, and long posts are great if you want to put up big fences, but not so great if you want to keep people’s attention… and I know this post is already long so I won’t add the full qualification questions to it… those can be downloaded from here. However, I will be going through a slightly updated set of questions in a following post and I also want to finish by looking at how qualification should be included into my simple pipeline.

Qualifying the Pipeline
In Part 2 of this series I introduced a simple pipeline concept. Now I want to add a little more clarification to the pipeline. Refer back to the pipeline that we created from part 2. Now draw two vertical lines down the pipeline to split it into 3 equal sections. You now have a pipeline grid system with three grids in the Upside and three grids in the Commit. In the first grid in the commit add the words ‘Is It Real’, then in the next grid enter ‘Can We Win’ and in the last ‘Will We Win’. Now place your deals in the appropriate grids.

The next recession proofing post I’ll start looking at each of the three sections in the pipeline.

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Since I posted part one of recession proofing your business I have looked more closely at the USA economy… just as fragile as the UK’s and people talking about a real possibility of a recession… so time to get ready!

Sales are the life blood of the company, so restricting the flow of sales by reducing headcount is typically not a good idea, however, headcount freezes will be on and people who leave may not be replaced. It’s generally not your poor performers who leave, it’s your good ones, they’re good so they can leave more easily and you will be left with the poor ones, the ones who struggle in a normal market and in a recession… well let’s just say it won’t be pretty.

With money tight there will be fewer opportunities around and so, as I said in my last post, you will have to win more of what is out there… and even what is out there will be difficult to win. Therefore you have to choose your fights and put all your effort into the deals that you can win… be very selective and only chase the deals you can win… nothing else should be in you pipeline to distract you.

A few years ago I worked for a company that sold ERP systems to the process industry… our biggest competitor was SAP… most people in the IT industry have heard of SAP… but unfortunately not many had heard of us… Marcam. I ended up working in South Africa where Marcam only had a small presence and SAP were pretty big… they were on every tender and winning. We developed our strategy to beat them… it was simple… we had limited resources and when we spread them thin we lost, but when we concentrated them on deals we won. We learnt to qualify, only work on deals we can win and then put all our resources on those deals… swamp them with people… develop relationships… build trust… reduce the customer’s risk and we get the order. We won because SAP continued to spread themselves thin… they thought their reputation was good enough to win and they chased everything. They still won plenty, but not when they came up against us!

So, first part of the recession strategy is Pipeline Management… and to help understand what I mean by pipeline management … a kindergarten explanation…

Pipeline Management.
As a sales professional you need to manage your own pipeline. Irrespective of what the corporate pipeline looks like, you need your own simple version. Take a piece of paper and turn it so its landscape and draw a vertical line down the left side about a quarter of the way into the page… the left side of the line label Funnel and the right side label Pipeline. Now draw a horizontal line through the middle of the vertical line all the way across the page. Label the top right quadrant ‘upside’ and the bottom right ‘commit’. In the top right of the paper write down the sales period you are in… let’s assume you are running quarters… so write Q1, Q2, Q3 or Q4. In the top left write your name… it’s your pipeline! Now do the same again 3 times, but increment the quarters in the top right and you should end up with four pipeline sheets covering 4 different quarters.

Now we are going to sort all your opportunities into two lists. One list is the funnel and the other pipeline. If you are doing this on paper then get some small Post It notes… the ones about the size of an index finger and use one per opportunity. Write customer name, opportunity, value and close date. For each opportunity I want you to look at the close date and decide how confident you are that the opportunity will close by the date you have written. All those opportunities with a confidence level of less than 75% are in one and all the others in another pile. The less than 75% go into the Funnel and the others in the pipeline.

The Upside & Commit
The opportunities in the pipeline now need splitting again into two piles. Look at each one and gauge your confidence in winning them. Anything less than 75% confidence goes into one pile and the other into the second pile. The less than 75% opportunities get placed in the ‘Upside’ quadrant and the other pile in the ‘Commit’ quadrant.

The last thing to do is look at the dates of the opportunities in the Upside and Commit and move any that belong to other Quarters… leaving only those that will be closing in the current quarter. The first part of a good pipeline is to make sure it is time bound – only have deals in the pipeline for the period in which they are going to close. This is the first part of providing focus.

The second area of focus is to make sure you can make your number and for this you need to make sure the opportunities in the Commit quadrant are sufficient for this purpose. If the value of opportunities is not sufficient then you need to re-look at the opportunities in the Upside. Move down the next opportunity that is closest to the 75% confidence level. If this makes your number then you have a plan. The opportunities in the Commit quadrant are the ones that you focus all your attention on… these ones are the ones that you feel most in control of and the ones you believe the customer will be making a decision on… they will make your number… chasing the Upside dilutes your chances. Let me provide you with a little example to help temper you natural instinct to chase everything in your pipeline…

Less is More
You are a football (aka soccer) manager… you have 11 players, no squad, and you have four teams to play. Your objective is to win one of the four games. Good odds, but unfortunately all four games are going to be played simultaneously. So what do you do to achieve your objective?… spread your players across four games or 3 games or 2 games?… or do you concentrate on the one game that you believe you can win? Hopefully, as a football manager you will pick one game, but as a sales professional most will spread themselves too thin… less is more… don’t dilute your chances of winning but chasing everything in the belief it increases your chances… it doesn’t!

So, a rough and ready way to segment your pipeline… we now need to refine it by diving deeper into qualification. Good qualification is essential and never more so when the pressure is on to win more of an ever decreasing pie! I will cover this in the next post as part of my recession proofing strategies.

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I don’t want to be accused of doom mongering but I do believe that we are heading toward a real downturn in the market, if not a recession. In the UK the signs started many months ago and momentum is building. The American sub-prime debacle was the turning point. Banks have lost billions… doesn’t matter what currency you measure it in… it’s billions. Separate to this the cost of raw food, such as corn, has leapt about 20%. This food stuff is not only used for feeding humans, but also livestock, so cost of meat, milk, eggs, bread, etc has increased. Cost of energy is rising… oil is over $100 a barrel and this is now being felt in the domestic market. The bank debacle has lead to shortages of money. Mortgages are not so easy to obtain and the cost of them is rising. House prices are falling and so the housing market is taking a hit. A buoyant housing market drives a lot of money through the economy. One of our main high street stalwarts – Marks & Spencer – recently announced poor Christmas trading results and lost 20% of their stock value. People are spending less and when that happens it ripples through the whole economy.

I have customers who sell to the banks… the banks have stopped spending… millions of dollars worth of projects have just gone on hold or cancelled while they sort themselves out… the knock on effect of the sub-prime jolly (banks packaged up these debts into nice bundles producing great returns for those that bought the bundles… that is until people stopped paying their mortgages) is biting hard.

The thing about recession proofing your business is that it needs to be done before the recession hits, not while you are in it. Let me give you an example… Many years ago I worked for a large organisation that had a software implementation division. I joined the organisation when times were good. However, I could see a downturn coming and out of all the divisions I was most concerned about the software division. They were making money, but they weren’t selling, just taking orders. They thought themselves brilliant sales people… they thought they were selling… they didn’t need help… why did they need to change, when they were making so much money! A downturn came… the order taking stopped and selling had to begin…they weren’t prepared… within 6 months the whole division was closed… 200 people off to pastures new.

Even in a recession people spend money, but there is just not so much to go around. Therefore, to recession proof your business you have to learn how to win a bigger slice of a smaller pie. Your own resources are going to be limited, you have to pick your fights and you have to increase your win rate… and so in part 2 of this post I will be taking you through how to do exactly that – win more with less.

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I’m having a moan and it’s only the 7th January!… and it’s all to do with inputs and outputs. If any of you are practitioners in Neuro Linguistic Programming you will know one of the presuppositions of NLP – if you want a different output, then you need a different input… however having thought about what I have just written for a few moments I realise this law is so fundamental that you don’t have to know anything about NLP to realise the same input will produce the same output and if you want something different then change the input.

This thought process started because I’ve just got back from visiting a colleague from another sales training organisation where part of our conversation was about how ineffective CRM was for field sales people and the upshot of the conversation was that everyone knows this, but nothing is done and so these expensive systems keep going in with the same input expecting a different output.

The problem as I see it, is that CRM is such a large purchase it’s the guys at the top who make the decision to purchase and expect the guys at the bottom to run it. The guys at the top know that the guys at the bottom need improving and are sold on the fact that CRM can introduce some form of command and control that will keep everyone in check. “They can be assigned tasks… and we can see what goes into the pipeline… we can see their activities and their email…. there will be no hiding!”

However, CRM companies know their systems don’t work that well with sales guys and its seems that conventional wisdom from those who like to think they are in the know is that the problem with CRM is that it is content free… no process behind it… just a well structured database, and therefore the conclusion has been that CRM needs a sales methodology integrated into it. So, we now see CRM systems integrated with the well known sales methodologies and guess what?… little improvement.

Conventional wisdom also tells us that if we want to improve sales we need to introduce a strong sales methodology and there are plenty of them around to choose from. They may have different names, but they all do essentially the same thing… help manage a sales opportunity. They don’t actually directly help a salesperson manage their core task. Most methodologies are also too complex… they are fine in theory, but out in the battlefield, in the heat of the moment, just too complex to fully apply.

CRM is also too complex… it just needs too much information, it’s not that user friendly and does not provide the sales guy with anything that will help him achieve their core task. Therefore, integrating methodology with CRM is not going to help sales guys achieve that much more than they already do.

So what’s the core task?… above all else the sales guy needs to make, or preferably exceed, his number. He needs to be able to manage his portfolio of opportunities so that he can make his number. This activity is commonly known as pipeline management and this is one of the main reasons CRM is implemented… to get control of the pipeline. Most, if not all, organisations think pipeline management is the prerogative of the organisation and it’s the sales guy’s duty to fill the pipeline for all those to see it, ask questions about it, poke it, throw out deals, question why deals are not moving and generally use it against the sales guy… or at least that’s what many of them think! So, guess what?… not all deals are put in, it’s also not updated with the truth if the truth is going to be used to beat up the sales guy and therefore everything else falls by the way side… and no conventional sales methodology integrated into CRM is going to solve this problem… therefore, the core task is not addressed.

Let’s recap… the top guys in the organisation want to see the pipeline. They Implement CRM to get a corporate view of the pipeline. CRM companies don’t understand pipeline management and provide very poor functionality, but it looks good to the organisation who does not know any better. CRM is implemented and the returns are poor. Everyone realises something is wrong. It is thought the guys at the bottom are not doing their job, they can’t be… they don’t use the CRM system… so CRM companies introduce command and control functionality to help management keep these wayward sales guys under control. The guys at the top love it and more CRM is sold. Nothing improves… something else needs doing. CRM companies look around and see companies implementing sales methodologies and realise methodology is missing from CRM. However, it’s the wrong methodology, but no one knows this and it’s integrated. We now have a data hungry system even more hungry… and still no help with the core task.

To help overcome this problem we have come up with a solution. We have developed a sales opportunity tool that combines a personal sales pipeline with full deal plans. The tool follows a very simple pipeline methodology that works on the two outcome method of forecasting – win or lose – it is very visual and very quick to maintain. Sales people love it. Sales managers love it. It gets results and helps sales guys to overachieve. It does the core task… it helps the sales manager with the core task… they can see exactly how each person will be making their number. Each sales guy can also see how much commission they will be earning, particularly the effect of the accelerators if they overachieve… it’s amazing the focus this brings!

The system is run standalone and the sales guy has complete control over who sees the information. They see this as good… the guys at the top see this as bad. It’s not part of their corporate faith and therefore it’s bad… the guys at the top believe it’s going to take away from their beloved CRM… the CRM that’s not working nor providing the correct return on investment! Now, with our system, the one that the sales guy has complete control over… it has all opportunities in it… everything… and it allows the sales professional for the first time to start planning for the future sales periods… they can build their funnel of potential opportunities safe in the knowledge that it won’t be used against them. The result… forecast accuracy increases, they make their number, the sales manager is in better control and… interestingly enough… the corporate CRM becomes more accurate, because it is fed with accurate information.

Our systems are not sold to the guys at the top, we sell to the sales manager and those who have control over their budget will buy. We look to replace all the individual systems that sit outside of CRM and are developed because the sales professional needs a system that helps them control their business. These systems are invariably Excel based. We replace all these different Excel based systems into a single pipeline methodology that is common across the sales team. The price of our system is negligible and is often expensed on credit cards. We get in under the radar and have done more to get CRM accurate than CRM has ever done for itself.

The colleague I went to see was very impressed with our solution, he could see why sales guys would use it, could see how it would help them achieve, but he also knows that those at the top would not entertain it as they have too much invested in CRM and would not want to change faith… and that’s the moan… the problem seems too big and too cumbersome to introduce to the top guys for appears to be a different faith… however, it’s not about changing faith, it’s about introducing something that makes a difference and will make the CRM system more accurate, but it’s not linked directly to it and the sales guys controls what is seen, knows he can trust it, sees how it can help him achieve and wants to use it… the upshot… CRM becomes more accurate, but then we would have a different input and we can’t have that can we!

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