How to build a sales process for your human salesforce.

How to build a sales process for your human salesforce.

Jul 14, 2016 | Customers, Sales

These days great sales people, real ones, those that go and talk to customers and potential  customers are expensive, and hard to find.

Most often in a B2B environment their role is not just closing a sale but developing a relationship that is deeper and longer term than the individual  transaction. Success is measured not just by the transactions, but by the quality of the relationships they build, and the trust, that will take the pressure off price, delivery times, and the other quantitative measures used to judge performance from a distance.

It also true that the first time many sellers know a potential customer is in the market is after that customer has done a considerable amount of research, arrived at a short list, features required and price  point, which gives them the power in the conversation, unless you are able to re-frame it somehow.

The word ‘Process‘  in the headline implies repeatable, subject to continuous improvement, and measureable. In order to achieve these outcomes there are a number of building blocks:

Plan

The old cliché “failing to plan, is planning to fail’ is unfortunately true, that is why it is a cliché.  The caveat of course is that just planning will not generate an outcome, you actually have to implement. The gap between planning and implementation is deceptively wide and full of very hungry crocodiles  that will consume your will, time, and financial resources given the chance.

 

Don’t spend time, Invest it.

We demand a return  on our financial investments, why don’t we do the same for that most valuable of resources, our time? Most of us complete some sort of post capital expenditure review to check that the returns we expected and planned for prior to a capital investment actually materialised.

Why do we not do the same thing without most valuable resource, time?

This may be a challenging idea, but if you allocate your time to the ‘important but not urgent’ category rather than the seemingly urgent, but not important things that consume our lives, the returns will flow.

 

Learn continuously

Being able to learn is a gift, leverage it. Nobody becomes outstandingly good at something without learning from those who have gone before and mastered  the skills. Beyond a base level of skill, you need coaching to learn,  and it is the primary role of a sales manager to coach those in their team, so they learn, do better, effectively leveraging their time and expertise, learnt from those who went before, and their hard won experience.  A core part of learning is being able to be reflective about what worked and what did not, then making those small adjustments, day after day, to test and improve.

 

Be proactive

An old football coach of mine used to bang it into our heads that while defence was a critically important component of any contest, you did not win by preventing the other bloke from scoring, at best, it was a draw.

Being proactive is about experimenting, taking considered risks, searching for opportunities, prospecting for ideas and applications that others have missed, being unafraid of the power of the status quo, and being prepared to ask for forgiveness rather than waiting for permission.

My standard mantra is ‘get out of the building’ meaning nothing different or innovative happens within the context of your normal, routine activities.

 

Follow up obsessively

Few sales are made at the first contact, or second. It takes time and polite persistence mixed with an understanding of why the ‘target’ will benefit from buying from you. Failing to articulate the value of your proposition results in the follow up being Spam, but if the value is genuinely there, follow up builds credibility, and in a small way, a sense of reciprocity or obligation to at least give you the opportunity to make your pitch.

 

Remove ‘busywork’

We all know that work fills the time available, but we also know  that often the stuff being done is just ‘busywork’, stuff that rally makes little difference apart from reassuring yourself that you are needed, and others that you are indispensable. Remove it, ruthlessly, in favour of activity that customers would be prepared to pay for, because that is exactly what they are doing, indirectly.

 

Most of the real work is not digital

It has becomes to easy to rely in digital to do our jobs for us. It won’t, it can only do exactly as it is told. Besides, people buy from those they know like and trust, and I never met a computer I completely trusted, somehow they are not completely human.

 

As noted previously, the term ‘Sales’ is to my mind approaching redundant, as it conjured up in most people minds something less than what it is, or should be. The term I favour is Revenue Generation. This simple semantic change tends to shake perceptions and put the sales function into the spotlight as being vital, not just those people down the hall with company cars who go out to lunch a lot.

Another run for a hobby horse

Another run for a hobby horse

Jun 3, 2016 | Change, Marketing, Sales

‘Account Based Marketing’ or ABM is rapidly becoming the latest three letter acronym to which all and sundry seem to be hooking their horses.

All sorts of learned crap is being published,  assuring me that ABM is the way forward, so I just googled it, 39.5 million responses.

I always thought that serving key and strategically important customers, the core of ABM, was what successful marketing and sales had always been about.

Must be deluded?

20 years ago as a newly minted consultant hanging out my shingle after a successful corporate career, one of my first products was what I called ‘SKAM’.

While it always got a laugh when I put it up, the acronym stood for “Strategic Key Account Management”.

Having now had a look at some of the ABM stuff coming out, they have done little beyond update the technology and call something that is core to sales and marketing success by another name. Then because they are calling it something new, try and flog it to unsuspecting and perhaps intellectually compromised people with too much money and perhaps not enough experience to understand what marketing really is all about.

Too snarky?

Perhaps, but it is this sort of nonsense that gives those of us who are thinking about this stuff, and have been for a long time, a bad name.

Those who read my musings regularly will know I have a corral full of hobby horses which I let out for a run occasionally. This is one of those occasions, so forgive my rant, but it is fun, and it is my blog!

The absolute best way to overcome objections to a sale

The absolute best way to overcome objections to a sale

May 16, 2016 | Customers, Sales

Over many years and considerable experience in developing sales programs, one of the regular stumbling blocks is how to respond to objections.

The single best way I have ever seen to overcome a sales objection is to articulate the objection before the sales target gets the chance to do so. That usually shoots it down in flames as a serious objection if the conversation continues past that point.

For example, a while ago doing an assessment of a client’s sales efforts I sat with one of their sales people as they made the initial contact over the phone after the lead had been qualified by a reasonably robust process. My clients product is a quality offering in  a crowded market that has a number of cheaper offerings without the value added capabilities and guaranteed longevity. The qualification process filters out many of those for whom the feature additions will add no or little value, so those with whom we were trying to have a sales conversation had been judged to be genuine leads with a need we could fill. However, in the early parts of the conversation almost always  price was raised as a problem, and often it ended the sales process before it really got started.

When we turned the scripts around so that the sales personal brought up the premium pricing, acknowledging it was not for everyone, as not everyone values the assurance that comes with the quality built in to the design and fabrication of the product, price was removed as a barrier to the sale.

It worked almost every time multiplying the ‘conversion rate’ which was in this case gaining  the face to face opportunity to demonstrate the product in an operational context. From there, the sales conversation rate was already pretty high.

Following is a list of the common other barriers to completing a sale I have seen. Being creative about the manner in which they are handled has a great impact on the conversion rates.

Lack of perceived value in the product

Lack of urgency in purchasing the product

Perception that an alternative is superior

Internal politics in your customers business

Lack of funds to purchase

Personal issues with decision makers

Conflicting corporate initiatives

A no decision no risk attitude

Lack of trust in your company

Lack of personal rapport with you

Your inability to communicate effectively with them

Now you have a list of the possible objections, workshopping the responses is extremely useful

In short, make a feature of the things that you think they will object to, and remove it as an objection before a potential customer has the time and opportunity to bring it up themselves.

7 steps before the close to double conversion rates.

7 steps before the close to double conversion rates.

Apr 18, 2016 | Sales

Sales people for 100 years have been coached on how to do a close, often after a mini close or two.

These techniques all have their place, and in the past have worked enough for them to become the default, after all it is a numbers game.

However, when you last looked at your close rate, what was it?

Most would be in single figures.

100 leads, converts to 50 warms leads, converts to 10 hot leads, converts to 5 transactions.

What if there was a way to double, even triple that rate, make the 5% 10% or even 15%

There is.

Every sale is a journey, has a starting point and an end point, what happens in the middle determines your conversion rate.

  • Identify the prospect
  • Qualify the prospect as a lead
  • Understand their buying processes
  • Provide social proof
  • Make sure you are talking to the decision maker
  • Gain the support of those who influence the decision maker
  • Ensure your offer is irresistible

Making  the offer irresistible means that you do not talk about the offer from your perspective, you talk about what the offer means to them, the outcomes of accepting your offer.

Conversely, the result of passing it up

If I was selling you a lead generation process for your product selling for $499, and I promised to triple the conversion rate from its current 5% to 15%, would you take it?

The maths becomes very easy, $499 is either a great offer or a pile of rubbish, you can make the choice.

However, if I just concentrated on closing you on a lead gen process for $499 using all the old fashioned techniques, I would almost certainly fail, as it is all about me, and my stuff for $499, not about you, and the return you will get for a modest outlay of just $499. (Be quick offer closes at midnight. Could not help myself, as time linked offers do make them more compelling irrespective of anything else)

In other words, focus on the outcome, not the process, at each stage of the process.

Sell the hole, not the drill.

 

Are Woolworths new “Essentials” really essential?

Are Woolworths new “Essentials” really essential?

Apr 12, 2016 | retail, Sales

Woolworths have announced a change of their ‘Homebrand’ range of housebrands to ‘Woolworths Essentials’ a more ‘upmarket’ housebrand.

If that is all that is happening, will this just be putting lipstick on a pig?

The strategic and competitive challenges facing Woolies run way deeper than the packaging on a housebrand offering.

However, if it is a signal that the changes are cultural, and the changes are to impact the way the organisation operates, it may be the start of a competitive revival. To be fair however, Woolworths’ financial performance over the decade up to only two years ago was outstanding and shareholders had been a very happy bunch on the supermarket side of things. However, the suppliers have recently decided they have had enough, and customers are becoming more open to alternatives.

Suppliers and customers are surely pretty important groups to a retailer.

Housebrands started as strategic move in Australia by Franklins in packaged goods almost 40 years ago, as outlined in this ABC podcast. They had been around in variety and general merchandise for some time before that, Marks and Spencer in the UK pioneering the idea way back in the 1920’s.

Franklins raison d’etre was customer value. They achieved this by a combination of low prices, aggressive promotions, and the widest possible range of products. The addition of a low priced housebrand range in heavily shopped commodity categories made absolute sense, so they started with ‘No Frills’ margarine in the late 70’s.

At first, many Australian consumers hid the No Frills products in the bottom of their trolleys, hoping none of their friends saw, as it was perhaps a social indicator that could see them accused of being cheapskates or down to their last bob.

The brands you buy were, and still are, an important part of your own self-image.

Pretty quickly however, shoppers discovered that some housebrand Sku’s s offered great value, so they locked in on them, and the presence of a housebrand in a trolley came to indicate a canny, value-conscious shopper. Conversely they also rapidly discovered the Sku’s that offered only price as an incentive to buy a rubbish product, and discarded them. Consumers are very quick learners, and make choices in discriminating ways.

Experimenting with housebrands

Since those early days, retailers have experimented widely with housebrands, coming up with sometimes elaborate words to support the introduction of fancy labels on the same stuff, or to simply copy the new products of a proprietary supplier before the category is established in consumers minds.

Fluff when substance is needed.

The strategy has changed radically from the Franklins’ original model of using housebrands to deliver value to customers, to one of capturing proprietary margins without the expensive, and long term work of brand building that requires an understanding of consumers lives outside a supermarket. Instead their control of what goes on their shelves has been used to squeeze the margins of the remaining proprietary suppliers while filling the now vacant space with their own “Faux-brands”.

Niche housebrand

Both Woolworths and Coles have leveraged their mass merchandising and supply chain expertise into liquor retailing.

Go into Dan Murphy’s and look at their range, particularly of beers, fancy niche names, many of them are just sold in Dan’s, with no marketing credibility beyond the shelf space and quirky name.

They are a Housebrand.

Both also have ‘cleanskin’ wines also housebrands, but unashamedly so.

 Market niches

Private Label quality has improved over time, some of them are pretty good, as good as proprietary brands, although usually a bit different in composition, packaging, or in some way at least moderately meaningful to consumers.

The problem is that the retailers are in the business of flogging stuff. Product to consumers and shelf space to suppliers. It is a high volume, multiple  transaction, low margin business. By contrast, suppliers are in the business of building brands for the long term based on consumer preferences, behaviour and emerging lifestyle trends. They are the ones seeing market niches emerge, and building new products to suit, but why take the risk when you know that the retailers will copy you in a short space of time, squeeze your shelf space, and screw you on margin and terms.

Where will the genuine, category creating innovation come from? Not from the retailers if the past is any guide.

Not all the blame for the innovation stagnation that is evolving goes to the retailers. Proprietary marketers are also in the gun. It is suppliers, albeit under considerable retailer pressure, who have allowed the categories to become commodities by transferring the innovation and marketing funding to price promotion, thereby destroying the value of their brands over time.

Years ago as a young product manager, I worked for what has become Meadow Lea Foods. Meadow Lea margarine had been built into one of the strongest brands in supermarkets, with a dominating market share well over 20%, in a crowded field. I have not seen ‘Mum’ being congratulated for probably 20 years, presumably the available marketing and advertising funds were swung from what had worked to build the category, into the retailers pockets.

What is Meadow Lea’s market share now? I bet it is in single figures with the rest of the commoditised products in the category, although I have not seen any figures for a long time. Building a brand is a journey that is never complete, and if you stop giving consumers a reason to buy yours, they will follow your advice and stop.

Selling is still social

Selling is still social

Mar 31, 2016 | Customers, Marketing, Sales, Social Media

Well may you ask, has it not always been so?

Sales has always been at least somewhat social, the old ‘not what you know but who you know ‘ sort of process. However, the last decade or so things have become so competitive that the numbers have taken over, and we often seem to put the social dimensions back into second place.

The numbers however, have hidden the essential truth that people buy from people  not from organisations. The social selling tools that have evolved have put another  layer onto the selling process that enables scaling of effort, but at the end, people still buy from people.

Most of my clients these days are B2B marketers, some have embraced the social platforms around, but most see them as a place to stay in touch with family and friends, and have a point of common dislike of all the cat photos infesting social media.

However, leveraging the social platforms as selling tools that span the numbers and the people aspects of selling can make sales efforts highly effective. The platforms provide leverage to your efforts and when used well can deliver significant results.

Following are a few  commonly asked questions, and my usual response:

Which of the social platforms are best to use?

LinkedIn and Twitter are the most common for B2B, but B2C is a different matter, where Facebook and Pinterest dominate, but the needs change. What is clear is that you  cannot be all things to all people  so it is more about figuring out where your major prospective customers may hang out when in a professional mode rather than a social one, and going there. No different to the old sales techniques where you joined the golf club inhabited by your target prospects.

How to I spend my time productively?

Social sites can be prodigious consumers of that most rare of resources, our time. In my experience if you join platforms based on where your prospects are, you will maximise your time by limiting it to a combination of  two networks. This implies that you have a clear view of the interests, habits and digital behaviour of your primary potential and current customers, which is a whole new topic.

How do I connect?

Connection is a two way process, you need to reach out to them, but they need to be able to see that you might be worthwhile them investing some time, no matter how little in ‘being reached. ‘ Even if you are just asking someone to accept a connection invitation, most people will make the conscious decision, Yes or No, and there are things you need to do swing the numbers to’ yes’.

  • First you need to make the choices well. If you appear to be somebody who just seeks connections at random, and it is apparent that numbers are your objective, the rejection rate will be high. Think of your own behaviour, you are more likely to reject a connection request if it is just a generic request from someone you do not know. If you appear to be discriminating in your connections, that the circles you have a may be of value to the person on the receiving end, and the request is personalised, you will significantly improve your acceptance rate. It also takes more time.
  • Second, your profile needs to be one that is attractive to a potential connection. There is lots of advice on the net about ‘personal branding’ and while much if it is just common sense and tosh, the foundation is right. Imagine you are at a social gathering, you are more likely to be drawn into conversation with someone who appears to share your values and interests than someone who is way outside your normal fields. This is human, so consider it as you fill in your profile.  Ask yourself what it is about you that might interest those with whom you wish to connect, and highlight those characteristics and experiences.
  • Third, answer the question of yourself  “what is the value I can bring to this connection?. If you have nothing, why bother, and why should they bother.
  • Finally, send them a personalised message, something that offers evidence that you have done a bit of homework, and have something of value to offer them. Better still if you have a mutual acquaintance to who might be prepared to offer you the courtesy of using their name as a referrer. Importantly do not try and sell a new connection anything.  Again, think of the social setting. When you are introduced to someone who just talks about themselves, or immediately goes into a sales pitch, most of us just want to get away as fast as possible, and it is no different on social platforms.

Having done all that, the work of sales starts.