Jonathan Farrington’s Blog

Even companies that enjoy the luxury of clearly superior products, realise that those products will not sell themselves. As a minimum, companies need a sales force comprised of skilled professionals who understand the application of the product range, have an in-depth knowledge of their customer base, market sector and of course the competition. But even all these elements together are not sufficient to ensure optimum performance levels and profitable sales.

So What Is A Sales Process?

Put quite simply, it is a set of procedures, which determine how a company wishes its sales team to operate – “The way we do things around here”

The most successful organisations have implemented a process and an all-encompassing framework for defining performance standards. This involves assessing, appraising, developing, reviewing, providing continual feedback on performance, as well as implementing efficient and relevant process tools

Lack Of Direction

Far too frequently, competent salespeople are expected to channel their own activities into the areas that will produce the quickest wins. Unfortunately, left to their own devices, they don’t develop and pursue a formal strategy for moving a sale tangibly forward during each prospect interaction, neither do they have a clearly defined set of goals against which to measure the progress they are making Typically, their judgment is based on gut reaction and is purely subjective i.e., “Oh yes, I’ll get that order, he likes me”, because salespeople have to be optimistic by nature. They end up “dancing around” with prospects, in the hope that eventually they will get to their chosen point on the dance-floor i.e. -the sale. In this scenario, the customer has complete control.

A Discouraged Sales Force Diminishes Sales Efficiency

When their efforts don’t pay off immediately, even experienced salespeople tend to become discouraged. They spend more and more time struggling to meet their sales quotas and working less and less efficiently.

Feeling increasingly powerless to influence prospects, they may also begin to press for a sale in ineffective ways – for instance, by arranging formal product presentations to prospects that they have not even qualified or who haven’t yet agreed that they need the solution. They allow prospects to milk them for information without getting a commensurate commitment first – and even worse, they fail to defend margin and make unprofitable sales in order to achieve quotas. The details of what goes wrong differs for each individual salesperson but the net result is always the same, a discouraged sales force, diminished sales efficiency (i.e. wasted investment of sales time and resources that fail to produce high quality sales) and, consequently, increased cost of sales which inevitably drastically reduces net profit.

What’s the bottom line? Sales never result efficiently and with maximum revenue unless the sales process is continually and closely managed. But before the sales process can be managed, it must be manageable.

Developing A Consultative Sales Process

From the Sales Director’s perspective, developing a consultative sales process means developing a comprehensive, formal, realistic and step-by-step outline of what salespeople are expected to do. This is just as appropriate for internal and totally reactive sales teams as it is for external pro-active ones. This outline includes the activity and calls they must make, the relationships they should establish with prospects, the documentation they should use in sales calls, the issues they must discuss and resolve with prospects and the tangible goals they must achieve in sequence along the path to each sale, in order to achieve maximum effectiveness.

It’s only when such an outline is in place that sales management can be in a position to:
 Monitor the sales force’s activity, progress and results,
 Assess issues as they arise and take appropriate action,
 Redirect individual sales representatives’ efforts efficiently.

Although many organisations appreciate the importance of being customer-focused and talk in vague terms about their “consultative sales process”, surprisingly few sales leaders invest the time and energy required to develop a formal sales process – a process that is at once detailed and resilient enough to guide their salespeople and permit effective management of their efforts.

Overcoming Implementation Intertia

Even when a consultative sales process has been developed, understood by sales managers, written down and circulated, it’s often not enough. No matter how brilliant, a sales process will only be effective to the extent it is followed and used by frontline sales staff. And this is where most organisations fall down: overcoming inertia – among managers and salespeople alike – and implementing the process. The hurdles that must be cleared in order to get people throughout the organisation to actually implement it are enough to cause Sales Directors to tear their hair out. But a select few, of the very best, have found some innovative strategies that have enabled them to achieve the Holy Grail: Sustained sales growth achieved efficiently, reliably and by design.

Today’s News: What a great reception we received to our first two JF Uncut posts at the w/e: If you missed them, just scroll down.

The next Top Sales Experts ebook, has been delayed and will now launch next Tuesday - October 21st - I am certain the wait will be worth it!

Over on Top 10 Sales Articles this week, we again have a very strong ten nominees - so be sure to check them out here

Tomorrow: On the JF Guest Author Spot, is the very wise and very smart Kendra Lee, who last week sent me this message:

“Now for a story of how small the world is thanks to the internet and those of us who network. This week, I was working with a new client in a planning session for his sales managers. We had a facilitation session to get their buy-in and agreement on their next steps. During the session the EVP of Sales pulled out a definition of consultative selling “from a fellow named Jonathan Farrington” and quoted it to me!!!! It was so cool to say, “I know Jonathan well. We work together.”

Now, that is cool!

The JF Guest Author Spot

Steve Kraner

Despite tons of money spent on CRM software, and hours of time dedicated to business pipeline reviews, the forecast is still not accurate. Why?

Hope-based forecasting

The fundamental flaw in all forecasting is that we are asking sales people to report on their own performance. It’s a bit like the US Congress asking pro baseball players if they use steroids. If we ask salespeople to report that they are failing, we are kidding ourselves.

Level 1 Fix

Most organizations and sales managers ask for a forecast and apply a lot of pressure in the process. For example, a Sales VP told me the other day that his people could not properly project their business. I asked what he had tried to improve forecast accuracy. He said, “Last December I asked them all to commit to what they were going to close in the following 90 days.” I asked if that approach worked and he said, “No. They didn’t make the number they had committed to and they were THEIR numbers!” I asked him what they said when he debriefed their opportunities and walked them through a structured analysis of each deal in progress. He said, “I don’t do that.”

Please stop and think about that for a moment.

If you hired a golf coach who said, “Steve, the problem with your game is that the ball doesn’t go in the hole early enough and often enough.” What would you think of that golf coach?

You can’t coach based on OUTCOMES. If you want to change an outcome you have to address the underlying behaviors. When we beat them up with their own numbers, we aren’t adding any value and we are probably damaging their self-esteem. This results in subjective and inaccurate forecasts.

Level 2 Fix

So then we try a ‘uniform milestone’ grading scheme in an attempt to remove the subjectivity by establishing clear guidelines for what it means to be “at 80%.” This is better, but still more subjective than objective. These approaches fail because they try to solve the problem with tons of paperwork or lots of annoying buttons in a CRM system. The problem is that the reps gather all the information and then PUT IT IN A FILE OR IN A CRM SYSTEM. They look at it as busy work and they do just what it takes to keep their boss off their backs..

Further, if you’ve ever been through an account or opportunity review as a rep you face a manager who keeps asking questions until he find one you didn’t ask. It’s reduced to a game of “gotcha.” Again, very little learning is accomplished and the rep’s self esteem is bruised.

State of the Art

The state of the art is to use an Ultimate Contract. It is an agreement between the salesperson and the customer that outlines all of the key qualification conversations and the due diligence process that will lead to the ultimate ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ The purpose of this document is to make sure you don’t develop a proposal unless you are certain you have captured the full set of requirements and that they are seriously consider buying from you.

“The greatest enemy of communication is the illusion of it.”  - Pierre Martineau.

The Ultimate Contract requires the rep to ask the tough questions. (Please note, the real problem is that reps don’t ask the tough questions! We need to help them learn how to do this.) The verbal agreement is then reduced to writing and SHARED WITH THE CUSTOMER to ensure clarity. Since you send it to the customer, it serves as a behavior trap that you set for yourself, to make sure you ask all of the tough questions.

Since the customer had to see it and agree to it, it adds the next level of accuracy to the forecast. Subjectivity is removed by verifying the conversations with the customer. The account review becomes an integral part of the sales cycle.

How to do it

The manner in which you get to those agreements - tactically - conversationally - is the difference between being pushy and mutual agreement.

We use the term ‘contract’ to emphasize that sales people on the average need to recognize that it is a two-sided agreement and that both parties should have an equal degree of commitment. Contrast that with a proposal - in which the buyer’s only commitment is to allow the proposal to enter their in-box. When you call to follow up, they say, “I haven’t had a chance to read it yet.”

It’s in both parties best interest that you reach an engaged agreement or pull the plug on a process that is going nowhere.

As with any sales tactic, if well-executed, it works well. If not, it comes across as pushy.

Don’t toss out the CRM system

By-the-way, you can still use the CRM system. Just have the salespeople attach the Ultimate Contract to opportunity. Ask them to do less paperwork, then insist they do the minimum essential. The Ultimate Contract will give you a clear window into the real status of every opportunity and into the skills set of the rep who produced it.

I humbly suggest that a verified, mutual agreement is central to the original question about accurate forecasting.

An engineer by background, Steve Kraner is now the CEO of Sandler Sales Institute, a company that helps high tech executives embrace and develop their sales strategies.

Steve confesses that he disdained the sales side of business early in his career. A mistake, he says, that’s often repeated by ‘techie’ founders and CEOs. Steve admits that he had to learn to love sales – and says that so do high tech leaders if they want to win. According to Steve, many technology leaders don’t like selling, so they hire salespeople instead of embracing and leading the sales process. The result, he says, “is a technology company with as many sales systems as salespeople: a company that cannot forecast, team sell or scale.” In sum, a company that’s going to lose.

skraner@hightechguru.com
www.hightechguru.com
703-966-0192

You can read more about Steve here

Today’s News: The Queen of Cold calling, aka Wendy Weiss, has made another royal proclamation:

What would happen to your business if you were able to double the number of qualified, prospects you are able to reach?
 
How would it affect your bottom line if you met with and/or had comprehensive telephone conversations with twice the number of qualified, decision-makers?
 
How would it feel to have qualified, decision-makers eager, willing and delighted to meet with you?
 
Join Wendy Weiss, The Queen of Cold Calling, as she discusses cold calling and how she helps entrepreneurs, business owners and sales professionals - just like you - prospect fearlessly and schedule more new business appointments in less time.
 
The Cold Calling Free Preview Call is on September 18, 2008 and details can be found by clicking the banner below.

Social Media Today is enjoying a birthday today, so to Robin and the gang - best wishes!

Tomorrow: Question: Why do potentially good salespeople fail? Answer: Bad management.

Having worked with hundreds of organisations during my career, where I have helped, supported, and developed sales leaders, I am aware that many of those sales leaders were promoted into their role because they were top performing sales people. Yet, the role of sales person and sales leader has so many differences, which frequently result in the newly promoted sales leader feeling out of their depth and overwhelmed by their newly acquired responsibilities.

In 2004, a significant piece of research was conducted involving 2663 organisations: The report highlighted the fact that a major barrier to sales success was a failure to select and develop a sales leadership team capable of nurturing and fully developing their sales people’s potential.

The majority of sales leaders, new and experienced alike, say they do not have sufficient time or the resources to train and develop their sales teams. They are so focused on sales results, and so accustomed to achieving success through their personal pursuit of those results, that they overlook their greatest potential source of power - the power to achieve optimum performance levels from their teams.

I believe that the future trend for producing world-class standards in sales leadership will be achieved not by traditional classroom-based training alone. Until sales leaders are equipped with the resources, competence and motivation to want to accept the mantle of developing their own sales teams, any training is likely to be a tactical ‘one-off’ fix, born out of desperation to ‘hit that target’ rather than a sustainable planned approach that can be weaved seamlessly into the sales leader’s role.

Sustainable shifts in behaviour will only ever be realised when sales leaders have the skills and capabilities to provide coaching ‘in the moment’. The greatest value will be created by investing in building coaching capability and providing resources for support rather than endless programmes that rarely have impact longer than a three-month period.

As the whole sales profession continues to evolve, methods of the past become old-fashioned and redundant, overtaken by new exciting ways to boost sales in today’s global competitive marketplace. Yet, this in turn can be confusing and costly because how can a sales leader choose a method from the thousands of methods available with complete peace of mind?

Sales leaders are busy people with a huge variety of development requirements which means that the option to source development and knowledge based on what each individual wants, when they want it, can best be provided through a type of online sales library, where learning is categorised into key areas for speed of reference and provided in bite-sized chunks for easier implementation.

This is why we are adding a brand new dedicated section to the Resource Area at The JF Consultancy in October

The Zone will be a place where sales leaders can ‘pick and mix’ what they want, according to their own requirements. From sales team development sessions and sales team health checks to online sales leader competency profiling and essential techniques for sales leaders, It can be likened to a sales leadership encyclopaedia - it is an absolute “must go to” for time-strapped sales leaders everywhere and it will be FREE!

Today’s News: The very last of Jill Konrath’s FREE pre-SheBang teleseminars is running today, so be sure to register by clicking on the banner below.

Very interesting post from Dave Stein, which confirms much of what I have been evangelising about for the past two years - certainly a wake-up call for ”traditional” sales trainers: “iPhones And (Sales) Education”

Tomorrow: Fellow Top Sales Expert, Linda Richardson is my guest, which is timely as I am currently reading her latest book - “Perfect Selling - Open The Door, Close The Deal” - and I will be reviewing it for you in a couple of weeks.