Sales - Good and Evil

I just finished a very good book titled “The Pillars of the Earth’ by Ken Follett.  This is a great story that takes place in England during the Middle Ages.  The story is about Kings, Knights, Lords, Monks, Priest, Bishops, and Peasants and their struggles between good and evil.  While the author wrote this because of his love for Cathedrals built during this era, he included all the things that make for interesting reading: love, mystery, sex, war, murder, and the constant struggle between good and evil.  While this book is a page turner and shouldn’t take too long to read, it is not a quick read (973 pages).   

  

So what does this have to do with the Salesnet Blog? Let's focus on two themes in the book: the struggle between right and wrong and the cunning of one of the main characters in the book, Monk Phillip.  Phillip is a very honest monk surrounded by people inside and outside the church that are truly evil and will do anything to advance their agenda including lying, cheating, stealing, and even mass murder.  While Phillip struggles throughout the book, he stays honest to doing want is right and in the end good wins out over evil.         

Ok, so what does this have to do with Sales?  As most of you would agree, sales people have a bad reputation when it comes to being honest.  I have always believed that if you want to succeed in sales over the long term, you have to be honest.  You even have to be more honest than the average person because you have to overcome the stigma that comes with being in sales.  Always tell the truth and do what is best for the customers even if it means you don’t get the order today.  In the long run it will pay off.  One of my first sales managers many years ago said that I was a Boy Scout and that this was going to get in the way of my success in sales.  I wear the title proudly and have been able to be very successful in sales without losing my Boy Scout approach.  I’m not saying I never was less that fully honest with every client I have ever worked with but to the best of my ability I have always tried to be honest with the customer and do what is best for my customers.   I truly believe that in the long term this approach wins over the short term scorched earth approach.  

   

The second theme is the cunning of Phillip.  Phillip was constantly out thinking his adversaries.  He started as just a monk then became a Prior and then a Bishop.  He was able to build the tallest and most magnificent Cathedral in all of England and outlast and overcome multiple evil Kings and Earls.  He was almost always one step ahead of the enemy and while he didn’t win all the battles, he won in the end.  As sales people, we have to decide what type of sales person we want to be and if we want to be in it for the long haul.  If you are in it for the long haul, being honest is just as important as your cunning.     

Good Selling.

Is Your Sales Glass Half Full

This weekend I went to my youngest daughter’s graduation from college.  As you can imagine, I am thrilled to have my two daughters through college.   The keynote speaker at the ceremony spoke about what these graduates will face in the current job market.  She said that because the economy is so bad that they more than likely will not be able to get a job and that they shouldn’t just sit around and wait for their first job.  They should go to Europe, travel across the country, do social work, take up origami or a number of other things which have nothing to do with what they just spent four years of their life preparing for.  I was disappointed with this half empty view of their future and as a result, I decided I would do a blog about this Half Empty / Half Full subject.  

            

First let’s take the college graduates:  While the economy is bad, it is getting better and people are starting to hire again.  After many layoffs of senior employees with high salaries, many companies are looking to bring in young, new, inexpensive talent.  There has also been a rash of small companies started as a result of the layoffs.  These companies also need talent.  There is also great opportunity for the young entrepreneur college graduates to start new businesses.  While this may not be the best job market, I believe there are jobs for the people who want to work.  As an example Salesnet has added employees this year and we hope to add more in the coming months.  If you have just graduated from college and think the glass is half empty, you likely won’t find a job.  

I remember when I was about to get out of school, the economy was bad and the job market was weak.  In my last year of school I started sending out resumes to large companies that I thought I would like to work for even though I may not have had the type of degree that most of these companies required..  After sending out more than 50 resumes, I received one phone call.  The call was from Westinghouse Electric and the job was for an entry level field engineering position.  Even though I wasn’t qualified, I got the job.  Was I just lucky, maybe so, but a big part of being lucky is putting forth the effort.  I saw the glass as half full and for me it was.         

Second let's talk about sales people: Sales people have the choice of thinking that the current market is half full or half empty.  Let me borrow a story from a well know sales trainer.  He was invited to speak at a real estate company's sales meeting.   He was scheduled to speak to the group after lunch.  He decided to eat lunch with the group to get a feel for how the sales people were doing.  He sat between two of the company’s sales people.  He first turned to the sales person on his right and asked her how things were going.  She told him that the major employer in the area was laying off people and that her business was awful.  Even the people who hadn’t been laid off were concerned about their jobs and weren’t interested in real estate.  He then turned to the sales person on his left and asked her how her business was.  She said that the major company in the area had experienced some layoffs and many of these people were moving so she had been able to pick up a lot of listings and several of these people were looking for jobs in other areas and she was trying to help them find a new house or referring them to other agents in other areas.  She also said that a new small plant was coming to the area soon and that she had been able to sell a lot of houses to these people being transferred in to work at this plant.  She also said that foreclosures were up in the area and that for the first time she was now working foreclosures and had even started buying some of them for rental property.  Her business had never been better. 

      

Is your glass half full or half empty?  It's your choice.

Why CRM?

Companies purchase CRM products for many different reasons. Many are just looking to have a central place to keep all their contacts, some are looking to improve their ability to forecast business accurately, some are looking to improve customer support, some are looking at doing some email marketing with the CRM, and my favorite are the ones who are looking to improve their sales teams ability to sale more effectively. These companies are prime candidates for Salesnet. There are also many companies who don’t have a CRM.

I will use the car analogy to discuss the different situations. First let’s take the companies who have no CRM. This is like still using a horse and buggy to get from place to place. You can still get there but it will take you much longer and if you are in a race with your competition, you will lose. The cost is low but the value is also low.

Next we have the companies who use CRM as an electronic rolodex or filing cabinet. They just want to keep track of their customer’s contacts and maybe some notes about the customer and conversations they may have had with the customer. Believe it or not this is probably the largest group of CRM users. While there is some value gained by using CRM for this limited purpose, it is much like driving a Model T Ford. It is better than the horse and buggy but it is hard to get to where you want to go with this approach.

Third there is a group of CRM users who use their CRM to manage forecast, track activities, send email blast and maybe even some basic process capabilities. This is like driving a modern car. Likely you will have many new features in the car like antilock brakes, air bags, variable
speed wind shield wipers, CD players, and so on. The basic process capability in your CRM is like having a map in your car to guide you to your locations.

The last group takes advantage of everything that the third group has but also uses the CRM to drive sales effectiveness of the sales team. This is like having a GPS in the car. It makes it much easier to get to your location and even if you get off track it brings you back to the best route. Salesnet with its patented process engine is like having a GPS for your sales team that not only keeps them on track, it drives the correct activity and insures that the right data is captured at the right time with its also patented smart forms. While I can get to my destination without the GPS it sure makes it a lot easier if I have it. Until next week good sellng.

To Love Baseball is to Love Strategy and Statistics

Statistics may be defined as "a body of methods for making wise decisions in the face of uncertainty." ~W.A. Wallis



I’m often asked about sales statistics and/or analytics. Normal sales statistics are win loss ratios, win loss reasons and who your competition is when you lose or win. While these are very important there is much more to consider as you analyze your sales teams success and potential of future success.

Some people would say that it isn’t very important to analyze all the sales data while others people might say that they just don’t have the time or the capability to analyze the data. Before we get into the details of sales statics, let’s take a look at two of my favorite subjects outside of sales, baseball and fishing.

Why is baseball considered America’s past time? Why are we so attracted to a game that is so slow as compared to most other sports? I would say one reason is that it is a very strategic game with hundreds of decisions being made during the game to try to outwit the other team. I would also say that we love to look at all the statistics which help the managers decide who is going to bat, when to replace a pitcher, when to put the hit and run on, when to try to steal, when to bunt and so much more. Almost all of the decisions are based on statistics from past situations that are similar and who the players are and their past statistics. To love baseball is to love strategy and statistics. You also have to love the analysis of the statistics because that is what drives the strategy.

Not many sport fishermen keep statistics but I am one of the few. Every time I go fishing I log the water temp, weather, barometric pressure, wind speed and direction, moon phase, where I fished, how I fished and detail about what I caught. These details help me to set my strategy for the days fishing and take a lot of the guess work out of my fishing strategy. This keeping of statistics has improved my fishing success 10 fold and I’m not the only one. Most people who are really successful at fishing keep a log and refer to it often. I recently read an article about the person who holds the previous and current state record for striped bass caught in South Carolina and Georgia (previous record 59lb., 8oz., current record 63lb., and 4oz.). In this article he talks about his fishing log and how no one ever gets to look at this log. I currently will let anyone look at my log but when I break the state record that may change.

If you are not keeping statistics about your sales success and failures you are bound to repeat your mistakes. Most companies keep the basic sales statistics but don’t take advantage of the many other statistics that can be captured, measured and analyzed. Beyond the won loss details you should measure things like, time in each step of your sales process, success rates at each step of the process, win loss ratios by product, industry, strategy, location, sales person, and competition. Over time you can develop alarms for any data that shows that a deal is at risk (i.e. too long in a step, technical or product issues, pricing issues, etc).

I know that many people don’t have the proper type CRM system to collect and analyze the sales data. To do this properly you not only need a CRM product to capture and analyze the data, you must have a well defined sales process and a CRM system that drives and enforces this process. Of course, I believe that Salesnet is the only system that truly drives your sales process with a patented workflow engine and smart forms to insure that the right data is captured at the right time. Until next time:

“Statistics can be made to prove anything - even the truth.”

Sales Strategy

When I did my first draft of this blog and sent it to the person who checks it for mistakes, she didn’t seem to be able to read it all the way through. I ascertained from this that the blog was just a little boring and so I revamped it with my favorite subject “Fishing”.

Strategy means a lot of different things for different people in different situations. Today I’m going to discuss strategy as it refers to big ticket, long sales cycles, complex sales, but first I would like to talk about fishing strategies. You might not think that fishing requires a strategy but I would beg to differ.

You need to:
1. Decide what type of fish you are going to fish for. (In Sales this relates to defining your target market.)
2. Decide where you are going to fish. (Define your territory)
3. Decide what you are going to fish with. Are you going to use live bait or artificial? If you decided to use artificial bait, what type are you going to use and how are you going to display it to the fish?
4. Determine how deep you are going to fish?
5. Determine if you are going to troll?  If you decided to troll, how fast and deep are you going to troll?
6. Determine what kind of fishing poles you are going to use?

All of these decisions are very important and interrelated if you expect to catch fish. If your focus is just to relax then you could just put a hook in the water and hope that a fish runs into the hook. Trying to sell without a strategy is like fishing with a hook in the middle of the lake with nothing on the hook or like an 80 year-old-friend of mind says “fishin’ on credit”.

When it comes to complex sales, I like to break down strategy into 4 different types: Direct, Indirect, Delay and Divisional. Many sales methodologies use different terms for these four strategies but they are very similar when you drill down into each strategy type. While I think it is important to understand what these four strategies mean, I think it is just as important to execute your strategy to the best of your ability. I have seen a few unsuccessful sales people who were good at developing the strategy and poor at execution but I have seen many more unsuccessful sales people who just didn’t have a strategy. Keep in mind that there is no silver bullet in sales and a sales strategy isn’t the silver bullet. In fishing you are always being offered the magic bait but as someone who has purchased many magic baits, there is no magic bait. Being successful at complex sales is a combination of Strategy, Tactics, Product Knowledge, Client Knowledge, Politics, Identifying Pain, Establishing Value and Execution.
Four strategy types:

1. Direct Strategy: This is the strategy that most sales people use even when they don’t think about strategy. You should only use a direct strategy if you have an overwhelming competitive advantage. This includes both a product advantage and a relationship advantage. If you have this overwhelming advantage, you want push straight ahead and close it as soon as possible before the competition has a chance to catch up or change the rules.
If the fish are biting where you are and you have the right bait, you want to catch as many fish as fast as you can before the fish stop biting.

2. Indirect Strategy: If you don’t have an overwhelming competitive advantage then you need to change the buying criteria to your advantage. Many sales methodologies suggest that you do this at the 11th hour so that the competition doesn’t have time to react. While I somewhat agree with this, I must caution you that if you do this too late, the deal may already be done. Timing is important and I would suggest that you have to decide when is the best time to change the buying criteria based on your customers’ situation.

An example of an indirect strategy in my world: many potential clients come to us wanting to purchase a CRM product to improve the efficiency of their sales team by managing their contacts, activities and forecast. We would normally use an indirect strategy and try to change the buying criteria to focusing on making the sales team more effective. If we can get the customer to make this the buying criteria, then we will win the business because that is what Salesnet is all about.

The fishing analogy here is if you don’t have the right bait or if you are in the wrong place at the wrong time, you may have to change the bait you are using and how you are presenting it to force the fish to bite. You may even have to move to a different location.

3. Delay Strategy: This is where you can’t win the business now but you could win this business if the project were delayed. For example: if you have a new product coming out in six months that would give you a competitive advantage but today you would likely lose, you may want to try a delay strategy.

If the fish are biting but just not on something you have to fish with, you may want to delay your fishing until you can get the right bait.

4. Divisional Strategy: This is where you know you can’t win the whole project but you could win part of the business. Sometimes this means taking on a partner to take part of the project. This is also the strategy to use if you decide to go after a small division inside a larger company. You know it is unlikely that you can get the larger companies business, so you get your foot in the door with a small division and work up from there.

If you don’t have the right bait or tackle to fish for striped bass today but you do have the right bait and tackle to fish for largemouth bass, then maybe you should just try to catch the largemouth bass and leave the striped bass for another day.

We could spend much more time on each of these strategies but as this is a blog and not a training session, I would just like to say that if you’re in complex sales and you haven’t thought about strategy, you are at risk of losing to someone who has.