The most common problems with sales & marketing plans

1. Not specific enough about what is going to be done and when (action
plan, dates, costs, deadlines, etc.)
2. Not enough marketing and strategic validation, insufficient
objective information and input
3. Not flexible enough to respond to changing market circumstances
(time horizon is too long and review processes are inadequate)
4. Writing a thesis versus setting direction, making decisions,
generating consensus, empowerment, etc.
5. Insufficient bottom-up involvement (involve customers and staff) –
traditional process for writing plans is not the best means of
collaboration in the new era)
6. Cross functional – align sales and marketing
7. Process is more important than the plan
8. Trade-offs not explicit – strategy is not clear
9. What is the purpose of the plan / the audience

What would help your sales team to maximise its success?

– More effective leadership (including leading by example)
– Clearer lines of responsibility
– Involving and engaging the team
– Greater appreciation and recognition
– Improved communication & openness
– Creation of a high-trust culture
– Greater clarity of direction
– Encourage greater innovation & creativity
– Delegation of responsibility and the empowerment of staff
– More effective administration, organisation & planning
– Remove barriers to increased effectiveness (as perceived by the team)
– Improved team work, team spirit, etc.
– More sales support (administration, lead generation, technical, etc)
– Easier to use sales systems (to track and manage leads, meetings,
cycles, orders, etc)
– Revised sales structures (e.g. more effective sales meetings, or
revised reporting arrangements)
– Training & investing in people
– Revised rewards & incentives
– Sales process changes (addressing the issue of sales effectiveness)
– Remove false expectations and limiting beliefs (e.g. nobody is
buying at the moment)
– Greater visibility

Are there any obstacles in the way of individual sales people selling more?

What is getting in the way of each of your sales people selling more?  Many managers are afraid to ask this question fearing the result will  be a list of excuses. The result is the opposite however - once all potential barriers (real or imagined) are clearly identified they can be tackled head on.

The most common barriers are; the relationship with the manager, levels of marketing and support, changes in the market (e.g. competition), the sales message or proposition and inefficient sales systems.

Here is a list of the key areas in which sales people can be helped to sell more:

(a) Leadership
Including building trust and respect, better communication, involvement in decisions, lead by example, clarity of responsibilities and direction, consistency, etc.

(b) Support
Provide assistance in the following areas:
– Messaging (how to communicate a compelling proposition for the customer)
– Marketing support / materials / sales aides / build awareness / references
– Product / industry knowledge and market intelligence (including competitor analysis, etc.)
– Sales training and coaching
– Pre-sales support
– Delivery / implementation / customer service / account management
– Unrealistic or impossible sales targets ) / demands

(c) Free up more time for selling by reducing time spent on:
– lead generation
– sales reporting
– admin
– preparing proposals
– travelling
– other areas (e.g. product meetings, order fulfilment, etc.)

(d) Provide more and better leads:
– Assist the sales person to be more effective in generating more of his/her own leads (buying, or building lists, direct mail shots, marketing support, etc.) 
– Provide the sales person with more and better leads in order to support his/her own led generation, contacts, black book, introductions, etc.

(e) Sales systems
The effective use of a good sales system (SFA/CRM) allows sales people to reduce reporting time, improve levels of personal organisation and increase sales effectiveness (conversion rates).

Yet, most sales people don't use a sales database, or at least don't use it fully. They regularly complain that sales databases, or systems that are cumbersome, slow, lacking in functionality (e.g. mail, calendar, etc.) and containing out-of-date information.

– Upgrade, or replace the system to ensure full usability and functionality
– Provide more training and user support
– Provide administrative support (including purging the system of redundant information, etc.)
– Make use of the system compulsory (linking it to payment of commissions, etc.)

(f) Strategic issues, dealing with the following objections:
– Competitive advantage (from pricing to product comparison)
– The market place is in a state of change (e.g. a downturn, etc.)
– We are not well known in the marketplace
– We need to build our brand, or change our reputation
– We need more / better reference sites / customers
– We need to re-examine the markets we are serving (geographic, sectoral, etc.)

Sales Success - the cost of bad leadership

A good leader can transform ordinary sales people into champions; a bad one will hold everybody back.

Job related performance and satisfaction  (we sometimes forget that the two are inextricably linked) depends more on the quality of the manager than almost anything else.

Leadership, empowerment, coaching and motivation are not soft stuff, they have the potential to boost the performance of individuals and teams by as much as one third.

A major office supplies company had long suffered from poor leadership at the top and a culture organization-wide of:
• Excessive bureaucracy
• Poor communication
• Limited innovation
• A culture of blame
• Poor teamwork

There was confusion about the lines of communication, with sales people going over the head of the sales director and to have decisions reversed by the CEO. Levels of trust were low owing to u-turns on previous commitments made by management regarding commission payments.

There was no documented sales plan, no mechanisms to review performance and no written job descriptions, or contracts of employment. Sales meetings were both irregular and Ineffective.

How to calculate the cost? Well, the company was hemorrhaging customers and sales at a rate of up to 15% annually.

The series of changes culminated in each sales person developing and agreeing their own individual sales plan. The results were important, however when the manager was moved aside the performance of the team soared to new levels.

Do you really know what your sales people are thinking?

Most managers are reluctant to ask their sales people what they need to succeed.

One manager employed a confidential online questionnaire to find that 65% of his sales team identified lead generation, administrative requirements, customer support and sales collateral as barriers to their success.

Rather than viewing the responses as a series of excuses, the manager seized the opportunity to drive sales forward.

The result was a number of quit pro quo commitments by the manager, including specific actions to generate more leads, create new collateral, etc.

In return the sales team committed to increasing the levels of sales activity and effectiveness, as well as to the consistent use of the company's sales database.  Levels of sales activity rose swiftly, with many more potential customers being meet.  Everybody won - he company got strong revenue growth and the sales people morecommissions.

Understanding sales team performance

It is too easy to point the finger at an under-performing sales person and miss the bigger issue in terms of organisational sales performance and potential. The former is generally a symptom rather than a cause.

So, to really understand the performance of a sales person, a sales team, or a sales organization look at it in 4 dimensions:

1. From the top down, in terms of the; leader, team and the individual sales person

2. Across the different stages of the sales process: Leads, meetings, cycles, orders and repeat orders

3. In terms of skills, behaviors and attitudes as they are today and what is required into the future

4. In the context of the key elements of sales effectiveness - that is sales; systems, structures, processes and plans

Coping With the Worst of the Recession - Inspirational Stories

Imagine you had invested the past five years and significant amounts of your own personal wealth, as well as that of private investors, in the pursuit of a new technology and related market opportunity.

Everything is going well, with some customers biting, lots of market interest, and the promise of further investment to take your product to market.  Then the market collapses and your customers stall and investment funds evaporate.  You would be devastated, right?

Well, most of us would be.  But we have been meeting entrepreneurs of late who have had their business plans and more fundamentally their dreams undermined by the global recession.  But, while their metal has been tested, they have not been found wanting, either of; creativity,
resilience, or determination.  In a market in freefall and a time of gloomy news, that is a source of great encouragement.

In the above example the entrepreneur closed shop and set up a new business that is related to the previous one, but cleverer.  Ironically, being pushed to the wall, has brought about a
break-through in terms of; product, technology and market.  The new business model is slicker, leaner and less risky - the odds likely to enjoy greater business success.

To paraphrase Norman Vincent Peal there is, in every set back, disappointment, or disaster the seed of equal if not greater opportunity, or advantage.

Another entrepreneur this time in North America told us about the depression he experienced after closing his previously successful business.  With the downturn business had dramatically dried up dramatically.  The end of the business was inevitable, but the founder quickly bounced back.  There is no clear new direction, but lots of options are being optimistically explored.

To paraphrase Zig Ziglar 'failure is not a person, it is an outcome… it is temporary… it can be beneficial… it points you in a new direction'  So, in what direction will the winds of turmoil blow your business?  You may not end up where you planned, but the new economic order can create its own opportunities for those prepared to tack into the wind.

10 ways to increase the effectiveness of your sales team

Where do managers concerned with improving sales performance turn?  Here are the top 10:

1. Run a sales campaign (providing the impetus of specific sales campaigns supported by marketing initiatives)
   
   
2. Implement a sales systems (making target lists, sales planning, reporting and administration, as well as marketing much more efficient and allowing metrics regarding activity and effectiveness to be easily tracked across the sales team)
   
   
3. Revise your sales process (pre-qualification, more systematic needs analysis, relationship building, etc.)
   
   
4. Improve your sales structures (incl. incentives, meetings, reviews, etc.)
   
   
5. Providing better leadership and more coaching in the field
   
   
6. Provide sales / marketing / telesales support (including list building, generating awareness/enquiries, appointment setting, etc)
   
   
7. Provide some sales training – building confidence and skill, as well as product and industry knowledge
   
   
8. Segment your market (targeting specific niches or segments in a tailored and effective manner)
   
   
9. Revise your sales materials / collateral (updating tired sales aides, brochures, web pages, etc.)
   
   
10. Revisit your sales proposition (putting a new more compelling angle on the message for the customer)

Time to Start Blogging?

Why should you blog?

• To drive traffic to our website and improve our search engine ranking on the web

• To promote our company and its products

• To raise profile and to be seen as industry experts, or though leaders

• To tell our story and educate the marketplace in turn

• To become part of the community within our industry, market, or segment

What objectives should you have?

• Extent our reach in terms of market coverage

• Stickiness - interact with people more often and for longer

• Number of comments, subscribers, references to post and links to post (referral quality)

What tips should you follow?

• Don’t’ say anything unless you have something interesting to say… we want to feed the conversation

• Avoid profanity

• Always link to others….Create a voice and a sense of humor

• “Don’t diss” – most influential bloggers “practice an almost parliamentary civility” Paul Gillin pg. 22…. balance being timely and opinionated and being controversial

• Be transparent – don’t revise posts. unless you label update Posts Means we need to think carefully before we post

• Comment on other blogs (it invites direct interaction with that blogger)

• Before commenting make sure we have read the blogs posted over a three day period. Make sure we understand what motivates the blogger and what he/she likes to talk about…. Don’t just jump in

• Keep the blogs concise (ensure they have meaning). Length depends on topic

• Be responsive and track responses to posts and comments (comment tracking is important as posters are likely waiting a response – how this is managed later will depend on the number of comments)

• Point to other players who maybe competitors – history shows people will come back to us (need to include those with opinions on the topic)

• Tie RSS into our blogs (looking to tie separate RSS for each topic)

• Use content sharing tools: (e.g. tie in Social bookmarks to your posts)

• Register blogs with indexers

• Post tips and alerts we have set-up (acts like a FAQ and ‘How-to’. Also makes for a good blog post)

• Recognise other peoples alerts (this will be very important for us – need to acknowledge those who have put effort into their alerts)

• Write the posts so they don’t draw a conclusion…. Feed the conversation don’t kill it!

• Write with skimming in mind

  • Short sentences

  • Hook readers

  • Headings and bold where you want to draw in reader (Top-x headings do well. Lists make great posts)

• Use keywords so Google can get the context of blog content 

• Find the blog carnival that covers topics of interest

  
  

Big Vendor Marketing Insights

Today we had the opportunity to spend an hour with a senior executive in one of the leading global software vendors. The subject – messaging, or more precisely how sales and marketing lessons learned by the ‘big guys’ can be applied to smaller technologies companies.

So, you want to sell and market like a global software vendor? Well, here are some guidelines to consider:

Hold off on the detail – the functions, technology, etc. It can be difficult to differentiate on these elements and it is important to avoid sounding like everybody else. Take a different perspective.

Start with a clear statement of the problem that the technology is trying to solve, whether that is cost savings, security, or compliance. Tease out the implications of the problem. Relate your solution to struggles that businesses are facing. That is the business driver.

Put a bit of ‘oomp!’ in the message - focus on a hot topic, key business drivers, important trends, or key industry events. If you are not sure what they are, then check the headlines in a publication, like the; CIO magazine.

It is a crowded marketplace, so how are you going to stand out? It will require; bolder / brasher / more visionary statements /messages, not just technical product information.

Don’t try to be everything to everyone. In a sales meeting you can ask the customer what he, or she wants and then focus on that. But, on a web site or brochure you don’t really get to ask people what they want – you have to tell ‘em what you have got. You have to ‘nail your pictures to the wall’ - setting out in advance your proposition and sticking to it. That will require decisions and trade-offs.

How appealing the business is to large customers, or to potential partners, depends a lot on the message being communicated, as well as the impression created by web sites, etc. That is not necessarily fair, but it is the reality. Unless you can stand out, why should a potential client or partner chose your company, particularly when there may be existing relationships with other suppliers, or an issue of size and credibility.

Credibility that comes from stories. In a lot of cases, it is only when you are in front of the promoter(s) that you really get an idea of what a newer/smaller company can do. It is not the slides or the websites that communicate the message, but stories and examples told, often by accident, by the promoter. But if it requires a meeting with the promoter to get the message across that is not enough. Will your web, brochures, powerpoint slides, etc. sell in the absence of the promoter?

Strategy and the marketing message go hand-in-hand. Getting the message right can be liberating, it often has the effect of freeing management from nagging doubts about what the target market, or the message is, or should be.

If you want to scale sales – think big and don’t expect the promoters of the company to touch every sales cycle.

John O’ Gorman and Ray Collis – Sales planning, sales effectiveness, sales packaging, boosting sales