How to Improve and Adapt Your Sales Process

missing_jigsaw

 

Having an effective sales process is an ongoing labour of love – it needs to continuously improve and adapt.
Over the last 30 years we have worked with, been subject to, reviewed and critiqued, or designed and implemented many business processes, predominately in the sales and bid space for Finding, Winning and Retaining customers.

Below are a few reasons why they are (largely) incomplete and ineffective:

They are designed without input from the very people who have to use them every day, ignoring current good practices, and failing to get buy-in from their intended audience

  1. They are linear (with a start and an end) rather than circular (as in virtuous circle, see below)
  2. They omit a stage that captures lessons learned, and therefore fail to deliver continuous improvement
  3. They are not visible to the very people who should be using them every day, being stored on a server, when they should be on the wall of every office in every building

Definition of virtuous circle: Self-propagating advantageous situation in which a successful solution leads to more of a desired result or another success which generates still more desired results or successes in a chain.


Continuous Improvement seems to be a particular Achilles heel in many organisations’ processes and a serious oversight, which we come across again and again.

To illustrate this, we were once asked to critique a sales process that apparently cost $1M to develop; its final stage was Customer Award Decision. It was also 200 pages long, and lacked a one page summary. Clearly, continuous improvement was not on the mind of the organisation that took the $1M and scarpered!

Continuous improvement is embedded into the Get To Great® approach to sales effectiveness:

  1. Enable an assessment of the end to end sales process with all the stakeholders involved in Finding, Winning and Retaining customers
  2. Apply the proven Get To Great® benchmarking model to rapidly identify and prioritise the performance gaps and define a realistic action plan to fix them
  3. Implement the new processes, reviewing their impact regularly to quantify performance improvement, learn from the outcomes and respond to their effect
  4. Measure performance at least annually as part of the rhythm of the business to learn and adapt and to enable continuous sales performance improvement

This proven and trusted framework for sales transformation is valuable to any business looking to tackle specific challenges such as improved lead generation, increasing its sales conversion rate, reducing the cost of sale, improving its bid management capability and as referred to in this blog, for the continual improvement of an organisation’s sales effectiveness.

The approach has been deployed to great effect by many enterprise businesses that have applied Get To Great® Sales Performance Improvement to deliver a step change in finding, winning and retaining customers. They have increased their ability to engage, qualify and close profitable sales as a direct result.

See What Your Industry Peers Have to Say About Get to Great

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Too busy to improve your sales effectiveness? Here’s 4 easy steps to make you more efficient and effective

What’s the difference between a high pressure B2B sales job and spending 60 hours a week on a treadmill?
For many, the answer is – NOTHING!!

How many times do you try and get an appointment with a senior decision maker to be told they are too busy to meet with you?  Or even worse, after spending weeks, possibly months getting that precious slot in their hallowed diary, they go and cancel on you the day before.  No consideration to the fact that you could have constructed your diary around being in their neck of the woods on that specific day – invariably miles from your base office – and have probably pulled in people with specialist expertise to be there, or booked that non-refundable train ticket (to keep costs down – as per corporate remit).

The irony is, that if your value proposition is at all relevant or well-targeted to the organisation you are trying to meet, you are most likely trying to present something that will save them time, make them more efficient, take away a current problem, or at the very least enable them to tick yet another outstanding problem off their “to-do” list.

We had a similar situation just the other day with a major IT enterprise with an acknowledged issue around the reactive way they responded to bids.  When it came to managing bids, they always left it too late, always on the back foot, never able to marshal the right resources at the right time with the relevant knowledge, bidding without a win strategy or even having fully understood why they would (or probably wouldn’t) win, and running right up to the wire trying to find the information needed to answer all the mandatories.

The outcome of course is predictable.  An extremely high cost of sale, a low win rate and a disillusioned sales team who spend far too many evenings working towards deadlines and keeping their spirits up by eating cold pizza straight from the box.

So, to go back to the particular incident I was about to tell you about with this prospect – having eventually maneuvered around the organisation to identify the right contact and then after a persistent and targeted approach, getting them to agree to a meeting about how to build an effective bid capability, we were all ready to meet the very next day.

And then, came the punch line – “Sorry, will have to cancel tomorrow’s meeting.  We are too busy working on a bid”

My, how we laughed at the irony!!

They were too busy working on a bid, to find out how they could improve their processes for finding and winning customers and be more effective in their approach to winning a targeted and well-qualified sale.

Gatling_Gun_SalesmanThe old cartoon of the soldiers, too busy to see the Gatling gun salesman as they persisted fighting the battle with swords and arrows, came to mind.

However, we have all been there. Over the course of 14 years understanding the pain points of organisations to improve their sales effectiveness measurably, needless to say we have experienced this on a regular basis.

When getting a bid in on time or getting your organisation to approve a non-standard quote, is more difficult than going 10 rounds with the world heavy weight champion, then it’s time to take a step back to review the sales process.

Easier said than done I know – and to some extent the “I’m too busy answer” is understandable.  How do you free up the time to work out how to get off that treadmill and be more effective in your approach to Finding, Winning and Retaining customers when you are up to your eyes in doing the job?

Here’s a simple 4 point plan to sales effectiveness:

  1. Get all the stakeholders of the sales process together in one place for one day and enable the meeting through an impartial facilitator
  2. Use a proven benchmarking model which has been tried and tested by your peers to deliver improved sales performance in other enterprise organisations
  3. Quickly identify the performance gaps and define a realistic action plan to fix them, reviewing after 30 and 60 days
  4. Measure performance again at the end of 90 days to quantify the performance improvement

This approach has been deployed to great effect by many enterprise businesses that have applied Get To Great® Sales Performance Improvement to deliver a step change in finding, winning and retaining customers.  They have increased their ability to engage, qualify and close profitable sales as a direct result.

This proven and trusted framework for sales transformation is valuable to any business looking to tackle specific challenges such as improved lead generation, increasing its sales conversion rate, reducing the cost of sale, improving its bid management capability, or for continual improvement of its sales effectiveness.

See What Your Industry Peers Have to Say About Get to Great

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Newly Appointed Sales Leader?

Increasing Sales Effectiveness

How to Deliver Sales Success Before the Honeymoon Period is Over!

You are new to the role of sales director and possibly new to the organisation – a big gun with an impressive sales track record.  It may be that your organisation is looking to grow or diversify into a new market where you have expertise, or it may simply be that the previous guy has jumped (or was pushed).

Whatever the reason for your new job, there will be a lot of hope and expectation weighing on your shoulders. You are the White Knight, the Savior, The One who will lead the team, turn its performance around and set the company on the course to sales success!

But to deliver on that high expectation, you need to understand whether your organisation is geared up to enable sales or prevent them?

So what will you do first?

  • Sit down with each of your sales team to understand what they do, what’s in their pipeline, where they are against their targets, how reliable their sales judgment appears to be?
  • Understand what your organisation is good at/ bad at and learn what you should/ shouldn’t be promoting to customers?
  • Meet with the other department heads to see what they do and how well (or otherwise) they interface with your sales team?
  • Drive the length and breadth of the country to meet your happy (or unhappy) customers to see why they do (or don’t) like you?

All of the above?

Depending on the size of your organisation, this initial “familiarisation” could take a considerable length of time.  The same time that is ticking against your first quarter target clock…..

So how do you quickly balance the need to get under the skin of your organisation’s sales capability and learn enough about its idiosyncrasies to make you effective, before you lose the goodwill of your sponsors? 

It is a dilemma that needs to be faced quickly, since very few organisations will afford a new sales leader the luxury of 6 months, or even 3 months “settling in” period, to get a handle on what is going on and understand how they can make the required business impact.

Here’s a simple plan to sales effectiveness:

  1. Get all the stakeholders of the sales process together in one place and enable the meeting through an impartial facilitator
  2. Use a proven benchmarking model which has been tried and tested by your peers to deliver improved sales performance in other enterprise organisations
  3. Quickly identify the performance gaps and define a realistic action plan to fix them
  4. Measure performance again at the end of 90 days to demonstrate the performance improvement you have driven in your new role as sales leader

This approach has been deployed to great effect by many enterprise businesses that have applied Get To Great® Sales Performance Improvement to deliver a step change in finding, winning and retaining customers.  They have increased their ability to engage, qualify and close profitable sales as a direct result.

This proven and trusted framework for sales transformation is valuable to any business looking to tackle specific challenges such as lead generation, increasing its sales conversion rate, reducing cost of sale, or for continual improvement of its sales capability.  It is particularly relevant in organisations going through a major change such as new sales leadership and there are additional benefits in applying Get To Great® early in your tenancy of the sales leadership role:

  • you have no “baggage” or allegiance to the way things are done currently
  • you can bring your external knowledge to the debate
  • you will be able to demonstrate a measurable step change impact as a result of you joining the organisation

Download our Testimionials PDF to see what your industry peers have to say about Get To Great®

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How ‘Market Ready’ is Your Business?

In the first of a new series of blogs that considers the key aspects of achieving a sustainable revenue stream, from customer acquisition through to customer retention, we begin by asking the all important question – How ‘Market Ready’ is Your Business?

The failure of a number of established businesses illustrates the fact that existing strategies and management approaches can become ineffective in these challenging economic times.

Surviving and thriving in the current climate, therefore, requires a rethinking of your business approach – being fully aware of the strengths and weaknesses of your ‘market readiness’ in order to develop your strategy to suit and beat market conditions.

Computacenter looked at their market, adapted their business accordingly and are almost unrecognisable from 5 years ago, and doing very well. Find out more how Computacenter is delivering against its ‘Journey to Success’ strategy.

What is Market Readiness?

‘Market Readiness’ refers to having the products,  services, or experiences you offer to your target market, aligned to your target market , in order to delight your customers and increase profitability.

There are four fundamentals that your organisation must get right to achieve on-going success:

Get to Great Market Readiness

Market Alignment – Understand Your Market and Align Your Offering

Understanding your market, your customers and your competition is fundamental to sales success.  All three are constantly changing, especially in today’s economic climate.  When did your senior management team last spend a day reviewing your target market, its wants/needs, what it will pay and the ever-changing competitive threat?   If you didn’t review this fully last year, these key elements are almost certainly misaligned.

Only once your organisation fully understands these three critical market components can you accurately align what you sell and what you charge for it (aligned capability and pricing), maximising your chances of making a sale – and a profit.  Failure to do this can be fatal. Consider how many companies went under in the last few years and how prices have dropped for so many products and services; that’s market forces at work!

The need for market alignment seems logical and obvious; but still there are companies who don’t do it or do it badly – and suffer the consequences on a daily basis.  Why?  Perhaps they don’t recognise the problem, don’t know how to fix it or, worse, are burying their heads in the sand and hoping that things will right themselves automatically.  As the maxim goes, do what you always did and you will get what you always got.

How Can I Assess Our ‘Market Readiness’?

Using a tried and tested benchmarking methodology proven to deliver quick results – a Get to Great® winning and retaining customers workshop  is a facilitated one day activity that enables your organisation to more clearly assess your ‘Market Readiness’ for yourselves and identify quickly and objectively the key areas for improvement across the end to end process of finding, winning and retaining customers.  The one day workshop captures agreed actions that hone in on addressing the gaps and the overall assessment forms the basis for measuring ongoing performance improvement.

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What Does Success Look Like To You?

Happy New Year to you all from XLR8 Marketing!

What Success Looks LikeThe New Year’s resolution is a tradition that goes back to Ancient Rome. It’s also a great time for planning and goal setting in the workplace.

One of the biggest obstacles in driving successful outcomes is in developing consensus of not only what you want to achieve, but also what needs to change in order to deliver a solid strategy to get there.

Internal planning processes are well established in most organisations, but how can you be absolutely sure that you and your team have reached consensus?

Are you confident that everyone is suitably motivated and will work together to focus on the things that will deliver maximum impact?

By applying an end to end diagnostic approach that is externally facilitated, you will gain a measurable and objective view of your organisation’s capability for Finding, Winning and Retaining customers enabling you to reach that all important consensus on prioritising the things that will deliver the greatest impact.

Contact us to find out more about how Get to Great drives performance improvement that is immediate, objective, collaborative and cost effective.

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Another year beckons – another sales challenge looms: How do you give your business the best chance to succeed?

Squeeze orangeWe have all experienced the long hard slog to year end to squeeze every pip out of the pipeline to hit/exceed the year-end number.  Some years back, I remember one particularly tenacious MD who insisted on face to face meetings with each business manager every day in December and the questions were always the same.

 

  • What is going to close today?
  • What have you added to your pipeline since yesterday?
  • What will your final number be?

It was always the middle question that bemused me the most – the idea that there were loads of IT decision makers sitting at their desks just waiting for a sales guy to pick up the phone and ask them to spend over a hundred thousand pounds on a new IT solution that they didn’t even know they needed – oh, and could you do it before year end please?  Yes this year end…

Not only did it burn around 50% of every day for the entire sales management team focused internally chasing their sales guys and providing reports ready to receive a kicking for not finding a bluebird, it also demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of sustainable pipeline management and lead nurturing.

Of course, times have moved on now.  There are sophisticated CRM systems with integrated pipeline reporting and digital marketing solutions which provide end to end visibility from an initial unidentified website visitor, through visitor identification, to qualified prospect, a forecasted opportunity through to a converted sale.

Well at least the tools exist to make the job easier now.  But is your organisation taking advantage of the opportunity to find new organic leads and gain early visibility of potential buyers?  And if you have more level 1 leads than you know what to do with, how well are you nurturing those leads and prioritising how to qualify and engage with them?  Having got to your “best few”, how many do you convert, or are your competitors getting the lion’s share?

With the adoption of the internet as a fundamental tool for both buyers and sellers, the line between sales and marketing is more blurred than ever.  Organisations which deploy a joined up and aligned approach to sales and marketing are able to engage early in the buying cycle and deliver highest sales conversion.

Here’s 6 top tips adopted by organisations with best in class B2B sales and marketing processes:

  • Consider the end-to-end sales cycle process from finding the lead, through nurturing the lead to closing the sale.  Do the marketing initiatives support the sales function in providing valuable leads and sales enablement assets that align to your sales focus?  Similarly, does the sales function give priority to qualifying and nurturing marketing ready leads?
  • Establish a two-way, closed loop process for engaging the lead, which moves the responsibility between sales and marketing in line with the buying cycle.  The lead owner is responsible for employing appropriate engagement activities which best support the lead nurturing process to qualify the lead and move it through the sales funnel (or back to marketing to nurture).
  • Align the objectives of sales and marketing personnel to ensure they are all driving for the same goals and measured against the same metrics.  After all, it doesn’t matter how many marketing leads are generated if they are opportunities for deals the sales team can’t convert!  Both groups will consider the other to have added no value to the overall goal.
  • Measure the end to end revenue cycle from initial identification of a suspect through to closing the sale – what is the revenue potential at each stage of the process from identification, nurturing, qualification, quoting, conversion?
  • Establish joint accountability around the aligned objectives to support the common outcome of increased revenue with a focus on measuring marketing ROI as a percentage of revenue.
  • Gradually develop a collaborative and symbiotic culture between the two functions which creates common goals and vocabulary, rather than misaligned targets and miscommunication.

Organisations which recognise the benefits of joined up and collaborative sales and marketing systems and processes, will be in the best position to find new opportunities and convert the highest proportion of sales.

Is your organisation embracing the opportunity for finding and winning customers? Or are you already lining up for a kicking next year-end, too….

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I’m Lost and It’s Your Fault!

Hot Air BalloonA man in a hot air balloon realised he was lost. He reduced altitude and spotted a woman below. He descended a bit more and shouted,” Excuse me, can you help? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don’t know where I am.”

The woman below replied, “You are in a hot air balloon hovering approximately 30 feet above the ground. You are between 40 and 41 degrees north latitude and between 59 and 60 degrees west longitude.”

“You must be an engineer,” said the balloonist.

“I am,” replied the woman. “How did you know?”

“Well,” answered the balloonist, “everything you told me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to make of you, and the fact is I am still lost. Frankly, you’ve not been much help so far.”

The woman below responded, “You must be in management.”

“I am,” replied the balloonist, “but how did you know?”

“Well,” said the woman, “you don’t know where you are or where you are going. You have risen to where you are, due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise which you have no idea how to keep, and you expect people beneath you to solve your problems. The fact is you are in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but now, somehow, it’s my fault!”

It does highlight how people assess situations in different ways and the how different “personas” apply their own expertise to solve what may be their own perception of the problem.

Find out more how Get to Great can be applied to enable your sales AND marketing team to collectively identify performance inefficiencies and agree appropriate actions to resolve them.

http://www.gettogreat.com/how-it-works/

Get to Great® – Performance Improvement which is immediate, objective, collaborative and cost-effective.

We welcome your comments and feedback.

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Attracting and converting sales opportunities – are you even on the buyer’s radar?

Increase SalesWhen I think about how straight forward finding sales opportunities used to be, it makes me smile. Reminiscing back to the days when you leafed through various directories to identify target organisations, kept up to date with the business news by reading the FT and researched a company by reading their annual accounts.

Then having identified a potential target, you would pick up the phone, relying on charm and charisma to get past the receptionist / PA to the main decision maker to sniff out a potential opportunity and schmooze your way to an appointment.

These days, the boot is completely on the other foot.  Thanks to the internet, the buyer will be so well informed, often the first you will know of an opportunity is when you are approached to provide a proposal – non-ideal on so many levels!  The likelihood is you will have no insight, no relationship, no influence – and quite likely, no bid!

On the other hand, companies who have recognised and executed on a digital marketing strategy that connects with current buyer behaviour will be loving the fact that their cost of sale has dramatically reduced and their win rate has increased.

To test which camp your company is likely to be in, start by answering these simple questions:

• Are you easily found on Google – does your website rank highly for search phrases your target customers are using?

• Do you capture visitor details – for example newsletter subscriptions or to download content of value?

• Do you have ways of showcasing your solution – for example online webinars, YouTube videos or explainer animations?

• Do you regularly update your blog with interesting and relevant content?

• Do you publish white papers or e-books which influence the market?

• Are you active on relevant social media channels or within specialist interest groups?

• Is your company LinkedIn profile current and presenting a positive experience of your company?

Will you feature on the shortlist?

Find Out More

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The single biggest reason why you don’t win bids…

Who WhatOver the years I’ve read many articles about why companies don’t win bids and they all seem to focus on what people do during the bid process.  In my experience, this is wrong, because everything that happens DURING the bid largely impacts where you end up in the also-rans, rather than the final result – assuming you don’t make complete hash of the bid process, of course.

The single biggest reason people don’t win bids is based on the work they do BEFORE the buyer goes to market.  Some people call this ‘early-positioning’, getting ‘written-in’, ‘influencing the buyer’ any many other things and these phrases describe the activity well.

Think about some of the deals you’ve won – and as importantly, some you’ve lost – and analyse the work you did BEFORE the opportunity came to market.  Did you meet all the stakeholders?  Did they ask for ideas, or did you offer them?  Did you take them on customer visits?  Did you do proof-of-concept work?  Did they ask you for indicative costs?

And equally important is how well your company and its propositions are represented on-line, through your website and use of social media.  Research shows that today’s buyer completes around 70% of their selection to shortlist on-line, before ever reaching out to a company representative.

The benefits to the supplier who engages early are huge; insight, influence (solution and budget), COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE, deal shaping, the list goes on, and on.  The cost of not doing it are also huge; you’re bidding blind against someone who has done all the above.  I hope you have the sense to no bid, or that you lose early.

During a recent Get to Great® workshop for a major IT services company, they assessed themselves as over 80% overall against the model, but ‘only’ 65% on Understanding and Influencing, and then put in place a programme to improve that score considerably.  The priority question for them was:

How well does your organisation understand and influence the prospect and their business issues / requirement prior to them issuing a tender to the market?

What would your answer be?

Find Out More

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Who’d be in sales management?…Don’t get me started!!

FWKsmallerSome sales management styles are like the proverbial swan gliding across the lake with your sales pipeline and forecast completely under control.  On the other hand there is the style more akin to a duck paddling as hard as it can to keep the MD appeased whilst managing a pipeline the sounds like something out of Jackanory, thanks to the ingenuity of your sales team who present their forecast with such conviction, that even you almost believe it!

They seem to be busy enough – attending meetings, keeping their appointments up (by visiting anyone who will see them?), submitting proposals (are they well qualified?) and hopefully winning deals…… (although probably not as many as you’d like – or need).  And what about marketing?  How does being measured on how many emails they send out, how many twitter followers they have or how many people “click through” to the web site help you do your number??   And then there is the fire fighting that goes on post-sale!  Again, it’s up to you to pour oil on the troubled waters and cover for the rest of the organisation that didn’t deliver what the customer expected (or thought they had bought?)

And even if you are making your number, all that happens is the bar gets raised for next year.  Can you really be expected to keep pulling a rabbit out of the hat EVERY year end??

Operating within a dysfunctional process for finding and winning customers is not only very stressful for all involved, but is also very inefficient and costly.  However, when you are in the middle of the battle, it is not that easy to clear enough space to work out where the key problems lie – let alone start to resolve them.

A conventional solution is to “get an independent consultancy in” – you know, the ones who borrow your watch to tell you the time and charge you a packet for the privilege.  Consulting projects like this invariably take a significant length of time, starting with an assessment of the problem, which at a minimum will take days and in large organisations, will take weeks, possibly months.   The process is being “done to you”, not leveraging the expertise that lies within your organisation and seldom does it really secure the buy-in of the team on the ground, which after all, are the real experts here.

After the failure of many very large and high-profile consultancy led projects that have cost a fortune, delivered little and still left the organisations none the wiser as to how to really address the problems, organisations are rethinking their approach.

The power of an approach which brings together your own experts from across all aspects of the sales and marketing process to collaborate on a sales improvement plan which you understand intimately and have a vested interest in making work, is not only massively more cost effective but also ensures the ownership and buy-in of the whole team collaborating in the end to end process.

So, why bring in the suits to charge you the earth for borrowing your watch, when you actually have the expertise and ability to work out the time for yourself? Perhaps it is time to try another way.

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