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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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’ve been travelling the length and breadth of the UK last week and not been able to put up any posts on my blog and so feeling a little more than a tad guilty I’ve been trying to put one together during my lunch break on one of the training workshops that I’ve been running… to help me I enlisted the help of some friends and so my thanks go to Tony, Richard, Elaine, Mike and Dave (aka Ishbell) who helped me develop this list.

Here are our 5 best reasons why you should not manage your pipeline:

You Might Make Some Money
It may well be a fallacy that sales people want to make money. Some people clearly don’t rate it as a priority and therefore failing to manage the pipeline is the clearest sign that money is not important… it’s as that great inventor, Thomas Edison, once said… “Good fortune is what happens when opportunity meets with planning.”… so avoid good fortune because as we know money is the root of all evil and therefore best not to have too much of it.

It Limits Expectations
Let’s face it, managing your pipeline is only going to raise expectations. If you show that you are in control of your business you are setting the expectation that you are indeed in control… is this really the image you want to portray of yourself?

There’s No Fun Being Predictable
If we have some fun at work then the job becomes more enjoyable and it’s good to be able to enjoy your work. A couple of bluebirds in the pipeline has never done anyone any harm… you are way behind on your number, nothing in sight that is going to close… your boss is about to have a nervous breakdown due to pressure of not being anywhere near close to the number and you walk in with a fantastic deal, from nowhere, that saves the day. Just watch the relief on everyone’s face… is that not more enjoyable than being predictable?

Visibility Means Questions
The more there is to see, the more questions you will be asked. If there are big deals in the pipeline then more people will be asking the questions. While you take time to answer the questions you are not selling. Also, there may be some questions that you can’t answer and so you may lose some credibility, which you don’t want to happen and so by showing the deals you will really have to be in control and by demonstrating you are in control you will lose that aura of enigma that you have worked so hard to cultivate.

Makes you Replaceable
Let’s face it… show everything, keep contacts up to date, keep account plans up to date, keep pipelines up to date, produce full deal plans, etc, etc and you can be more easily replaced. Play everything close to your chest and management will find it more difficult to replace you… obviously you don’t want to be replaced, so is this not the best way to avoid it?

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Sales reviews, the bane of everyone’s lives. The sales manager has so many to do. The sales professional has to answer so many intrusive questions… and it all takes so long!

As the old adage goes… ‘time is money’… and as so eloquently expressed by the Romans all those years ago… ‘tempus fugit’… so time flies and the problem that causes is amply summed up by another old adage… ’so much to do, so little time’.

So, in the spirit of time is money, time flies and so much to do… then the shorter you can keep your sales reviews the happier everyone is going to be. Therefore, here are the only 3 questions that you need to ask…

1. Show me how you are going to make your number.
Following our pipeline methodology makes asking this question really easy. The sales exec is either going to show you how the number is going to be made, in which case move on to question 2, or not. If not, find out what they are doing to close the gap.

2. Show me how you are going to close your committed deals.
The committed deals make up the forecast and follow the binary method of forecasting – these are the deals the sales exec says will close. So, make sure the close plan is robust for these deals, everything else is incidentally because if these deals close the target is achieved… don’t waste time on incidentals!

3. Show me how you are filling your pipeline.
Lastly, s sustainable pipeline requires a full sales funnel. What is the sales exec doing to proactively fill the funnel? An empty funnel will lead to problems later.

There you are, 3 simple questions to help manage your team… I could have written a lot more, but kept this post short as time is money!

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As I have mentioned before… from time to time I answer questions that are posted up on the Q&A section of LinkedIn. I recently responded to a question by Flyn Penoyer the Inside sales Guru. His question was around qualifying deals as part of the critical aspect of selling.

He asked…

1. What is your definition of qualifying?

2. What or who should be qualified?

3. When, in the sales process, should the above qualifications take place?

4. Finally, give the readers your best tip or two on qualifying?

I answered…

1. What is your definition of qualifying?

Qualifying has four primary purposes…

a) To uncover what you don’t know about the deal – for example, budgets, people, pain, opportunity, etc, etc, as determined by your qualification criteria.

b) To help determine if the deal is real, if you can win it and if you are going to win it.

c) To help determine your sales activities – for example, to put plans in place to find out what you don’t know.

d) To determine the level of risk you are carrying on the deal – for example, are you prepared to continue with the deal if you can’t get to the decision maker – it’s a risk to continue putting your resources into the deal when you can’t influence the main person… are you prepared to take the risk?

2. What or who should be qualified?

I’ll start with the who… we define four major roles Stopper, Leader, Insider and Persuader. If you take the first letter from each role you get SLIP… which is what will happen to your deal if you don’t qualify properly!

Most people go after the decision makers, we qualify the Stoppers. A Stopper can stop the deal from happening and some of them can also make the deal happen. Decision makers are generally high up the organisation and few of them, whereas, Stoppers can be all over the organisation, at any level and also outside the organisation. For example, if you are selling IT, then some expert in the computer room could stop the deal from happening by saying your technology does not fit, but they couldn’t make it happen. An outside consultant could stop a deal, but couldn’t make it happen.

The Leader is you day to day contact.

The Insider is your coach… without a coach your qualification may well be suspect.

Persuaders are the informal and formal influencers.

What should be qualified?… not enough room here to cover it all, but the three main criteria we use I’ve already mentioned in 1b above. I will be covering the full list of qualification criteria in a later post, or you could download an early copy of the Qualification Analysis, which is a good start, but I will be updating it in the coming weeks.

3. When, in the sales process, should the above qualifications take place?

Always be qualifying… always. It’s never finished until you have the order. You will never know a 100% what is happening on the customer’s side. Relax and you may be caught out. However, there is a sequence to qualification and it links to the buying process. The primary sequence is as mentioned in 1b. The detailed sequence is in the eBook you can download for free from our site.

4. Finally, give the readers your best tip or two on qualifying?

For me there is one great qualification question to ask the customer… “When will the deal close?”… ask that question however you wish, but ask it. If the customer can’t or won’t commit to a timescale then you know immediately that something is wrong… you may not know what is wrong, but something is. The deal may not be real, they may not have the authority, you may not be in the running… whatever is wrong, you are not getting commitment from them and without commitment you may not be in the running for a deal.

If you get your date, great, work backwards and start working out other commitment dates and you now have something to help move the customer forward and timescales for when they have to make further commitments.

When is the deal going to close?… such a simple question to gain so much from the answer!

The reason for this post is that it is a good introduction to the qualification analysis that I will be posting under the ‘how to recession proof your business’ series.

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