I reply to the prospect, “I’m going to have three clients call you and give you a reference on my services.  I’ll also provide you with their contact names and phone numbers, but because of your busy schedule I will ask them to reach out to you and hopefully you’ll avoid playing phone tag.”

This always impresses the prospect.  Some version of “Gee, she’s got clients willing to call ME and give me a reference.  She must be very good,” is what goes through their head.

Then based on the project,  I select the most appropriate three clients and ask them to be a reference for me.  If I get voice mail, I leave a message and follow up with an email saying something along these lines:

“I was hoping you could be a reference for me.  I’m being considered for an opportunity that is similar to what I did for you.  In deference to your busy schedule, and so you can avoid playing phone tag, I’m providing the contact info below for my prospect.  At your convenience, could you please call this person and provide a reference for me?  If you get voice mail, just leave your opinion of my services in the voice mail message.  If my prospect wants to follow up, s/he will. ”

Now my clients, who are happy to provide a reference, are able to do so at their convenience.  And if they get voice mail (a likely occurence), they are still able to leave a message voicing their opinion of my service.

Here is why this works – everybody feels like I’m being respectful of their busy schedule.  My clients are happy to give references, and usually leave glowing voice mail messages.  The prospect is impressed because I have obviously built relationships strong enough to ask my clients to pro-actively give references instead of waiting for a call.  On more than one occasion, I’ve been awarded a contract when the prospect never actually TALKED to one of my references.  But between the voice mails from my clients and the video testimonials on my website, they felt like they HAD spoken to several clients.

Try this for yourself some time, you’ll be amazed at how efficient and effective this can be as a sales tool.

One common complaint heard from CEOs time and again is centered around the pipeline (or lack thereof) and the shortfall that occurs every quarter.  The pipeline never seems to live up to its promises.  I’ve sat in enough sales meetings now to quickly figure out if a company has a real pipeline or a pipe-dream.  The four most common mistakes I see are listed below:

1.  Lack of a common sales methodology:

There are a lot of great sales methodologies out there and many are equally effective.  Whether you adopt Spin Selling, Sandler, or something else it is important that you make sure everyone is following the same one.  The strength of any process comes in everyone speaking the same language and following the same methodology.  That way every opportunity is being managed in a similar fashion and the entire sales team is moving in unison.

2.  Lack of common descriptions for stages of the sale:

As with adopting a common methodology, you want everyone on the sales team to use the same definitions and stages for the sales cycle.  It doesn’t have to be complicated.  Here is a five stage system we often set up for our clients:

Stage 1 – This is a “suspect.”  You have not begun the qualification process.  You got this contact from a networking event, participation in a webinar, an online inquiry, etc.  You “suspect” this company/person may need your services and want to start a dialog.

Stage 2 – The first level of a prospect.  You’ve had at least one conversation, you are starting to understand the prospect’s “pain” and how you might provide a solution.  The prospect is interested in learning more about what you have to offer.

Stage 3 – The second level of a prospect.  You are having specific conversations with the person(s) involved in making a decision to purchase your product or services.  You are gathering the information you need in order to submit a proposal.  You have information on the budget, time line for decision, your competition and you are formulating your solution.

Stage 4 – Proposal stage.  You’ve submitted the proposal.  Ideally, you presented your proposal in person or the phone and got an initial reaction from the buyer.  You have been told when a decision will be reached and you can “guesstimate” your chances of winning.

Stage 5 – Pending Contract.  You’ve won your proposal and you are now getting the signed contract, the deposit check, and setting up the first stages of implementation.  This is one of the most critical stages of the sales process.  Many things can go wrong even after you’ve received a verbal award or a signed letter of intent.  It is important to monitor your sale until the equipment has been shipped, or the first meeting has taken place and the initial check is in the bank.

Lost – If you lost the bid, you still want to track this prospect.  The company that won the award might not deliver.  Or you may have an opportunity to get back in the door with a different solution.  Your sales management should define how you recycle a lost prospect back into the sales process.

Using a common sales process and description for where a prospect is in the sales cycle can eliminate about 50% of pipeline confusion.  Once you’ve defined the stages in your sales cycle, make sure you also have defined criteria for each stage.  The criteria should be more than what we’ve listed above.  It should include information on the prospect (company size, number of employees, SIC code, etc.)  in addition to specific criteria such as “you can’t move to stage 4 unless you can tell your sales manager when the customer plans to make a buying decision and who will be involved in that decision.”

3.  Not tracking the numbers

Sales is a numbers game.  You need X amount of suspects to get X amount of prospects to get X amount of meetings which will result in X amount of proposals which will result in ONE new customer.  The task of marketing and sales management is to shorten the sales cycle by reducing these ratios.  But if you aren’t tracking the numbers you have no idea what you’re reducing (or increasing!).

It takes 6-12 months to get a good “read” on the ratios that apply to your company sales cycle.  Once you have these ratios you can quickly look at a pipeline report and determine how realistic your quarterly revenue projections are going to be.  If the ratios in the pipeline don’t match your pre-determined sales cycle then you have a problem.

4.  Not using a centralized sales tracking system

It doesn’t matter if you choose ACT!, GoldMine, Salesforce.com, or any of the other sales tracking tools on the market today.  You want all the data in a centralized location.  We highly recommend using something that is web-based so that you and your management team can access the data from any location.  For many sales people, their rolodex is a valuable asset.  It isn’t uncommon to leave a company and turn in a laptop that has been wiped of all contact information.  Then management has to go in and try to recreate everything.

With a sales tracking system, you can enforce the stages of your sales cycle, you can assess your metrics, and determine (on an individual basis) who within the sales team is driving their sales forward and who is filling their pipeline with dreams.

I can’t guarantee that eliminating these four mistakes within your organization will ensure you hit your revenue targets.  However, I can guarantee that if you implement a standard sales methodology, adopt common sales stages and enforce criteria for each step of the sales cycle, measure your metrics and use a company-wide online sales tracking tool that your pipeline reports and revenue projections will be realistic, credible and far more accurate.

There was a time when it was unusual to receive anything but plain text into your email box. Then we moved to designing branded newsletters and “postcard-like” invitations that would capture the attention of our readers. Now, thanks to ever-improving SPAM filters a lot of those fancy invitations, announcements and emails aren’t even making it to our desktop. And for those that do get through the fire-wall, we’ve become jaded and tired of looking at all those designs. We just want the information – short, sweet and simple.

Playing on this hunch we recently experimented with a client that has been holding a series of seminars. As is typical, invitations had been sent out using HTML and branded design. But registrations were down and we were looking for a way to drive attendance. So we sent out another announcement about the event, except this was a simple text email. In the “from” section we had real person’s name. In the “subject” line we inserted the name of the seminar. In the body of the email was a sentence inviting the recipient to attend the seminar. We had about 3 key “what you’ll get” bullets and the basic description of the 2 hour session.

Within 24 hours of sending out the text email we received an additional 10 registrants for the event. Since the event was capped at 25 attendees, this was almost 50% of our audience!  We thought we might be on to something, so we did again for another client event.  And again, the results were similar.  The plain text email out performed the HTML invitation by over 50%.  Why?  I think our brains are just a little tired.  You can compare this to walking down the Las Vegas strip at night.  At first the lights are beautiful and everything captures your attention.  But walk the strip every night for months and months and after a while those pretty flashing lights aren’t going to capture your attention any longer.  You are going to simply focus on arriving at your destination.

Because of this, I believe that we’re coming full circle back to a more old-fashioned way of communicating.  I don’t have time to read my online newsletters as often as I would like.  But I notice that on Sunday afternoon I sit down and read several print journals I get in the mail each month.  The “cold-call” email blasts never capture my attention but last week I got a very clever direct mail piece that gave me pause and actually got me to call the service provider.  And I recently signed up for a webinar on advanced search engine marketing techniques that I learned about from a plain text email that was delivered to me from the owner of the interactive consultancy.

Am I advocating that we do away with HTML newsletters and announcements completely?  Of course not.  Those have a place in our marketing mix as does everything else.  I am suggesting that you consider alternating HTML with plain text and that you experiment with both.  If you’re holding an event, why not alternate each notice — the first in HTML, the second in plain text, etc.  And the day before the event — send out a plain text reminder.  And let me know if your response rates start increasing with this “old-fashioned” approach to email marketing.

• Do you have a strong sales leader?
• Do you have an established sales process?
• Do you track your pipeline?
• How many people sell in your company?
• Do you have a mix of hunters and farmers?

It’s not that we’re trying to be difficult.  We just don’t want to waste your money and our time.  If you don’t have a good sales team, a clear sales process, and a system to process leads through your pipeline, then spending money on marketing is going to be a waste.  No deal was ever lost because a sales person didn’t have the right brochure.  And (to my knowledge), no deal was ever won because the buyer saw a data sheet and yelled, “Holy smokes, lets go buy this product based on how great this data sheet looks!”  (Although this would be really cool if it did happen.)

The role of marketing in a company is to generate leads for the sales team, make sure sales has the tools to do their job, and that people have already heard about your company before the sales person calls.  This makes marketing an integral part of the success of any organization.  However, sales is more important.  Ideally, you’ve got someone experienced in your sales process.  She’s been cold calling, making sales presentations, following up on referrals, generating proposals and closing deals. If you don’t have someone like this, then a better use of your marketing dollars is to go find and train a decent sales person.  Or two. 

Then make sure you have a pipeline tracking system.  It can be a simple excel spreadsheet or a full blown CRM system like ACT! or Salesforce.com. The bottom line is that your marketing team, whether it is inside your company or outsourced to someone like Zephyr, isn’t going to close your deals for you.  They can nurture the lead to a certain point and make sure your website looks great and your sales team has all the necessary tools.  They can communicate to the market and position your company as the subject matter experts you are.  They can wring every dollar of marketing spend and make sure the ROI makes sense.  But they can’t close the deal. Only your sales team can do that, and that’s where the money is.  Make sure your sales infrastructure is sound before you start expanding your marketing efforts.

Goal
Create guides that share best selling practices and duplicate successful wins.

Process
Initiation: Make this a part of each win evaluation process – a senior level manager will identify those wins that should go into the Sales Guide.

Maintenance: Reviewed twice annually and new Guides included, old deleted as required.

Development: Sales team and engineering can be interviewed immediately after the win.  Account managers, channel reps and clients then interviewed after the solution is implemented/proven.  Zephyr Strategy will take the lead on scheduling all interviews, writing Guides, gaining approvals of identified approval points of contact.

Vertical Market Descriptions: The client will work with Zephyr to assist in developing & updating each vertical market profile for the Sales Guide.  This should include:

Vertical definition

• Trends, issues and challenges
• Organizational structures and decision maker profiles
• Hot buttons and key applications/opportunities for client solutions

Should this sale go in the Guide?  Here are some qualifying questions:

1. Is this a strategic win – that is, one that represents a significant market opportunity?
2. Can this win be replicated?
3. Are the participants available to create in internal sales case study (for the Sales Guide)?
4. Is the client open to interviews for:
5. An internal sales case study?
6. An external (customer focused) case study?
7. When will the solution be implemented? [or, when was the solution implemented?]
8. When should we follow up with the client?

Account Manager Questions – for each Guide, account managers would provide details to flesh out each of the bulleted sections describing the successful Guide.  This is typically done through an interview with a Zephyr writer.  We do not expect the AM to write up this report, nor do we expect them to be able to answer all these questions.  We will work to capture as much data as possible.

Opportunity (client/account) profile

• Client name, size of business, industry
• Where did the lead come from?
• How long was the sales cycle?
• Who are the clients/stakeholders served?
• Who was the channel partner (if appropriate)?

Decision makers and influencers

• Who where the key players on the customer’s side in this sale?
• Job titles

Budget cycle, justification, authority

• Describe the client’s budget
• Justification requirements
• Who had procurement authority in this sale?

Business need (pain points)

• What was their pain?
• Why did they initially want an <insert> solution?
• What made our solution an ideal answer?
• What was your sales process?  How did you go through discovery?

Competition

• Who was the competition?
• Why was your company selected?
• In what ways were we the superior solution?
• What tactics proved most successful in addressing the competition’s positioning or claims?
• Was this an existing installation for the competitor?
• What were their major dissatisfactions with the competition?
• What did they like and want to keep?

Detail of solution provided

• Describe the solution we provided.
• Supply a diagram/schematic and list of products.
• Key applications
• How does the client use the solution?
• What applications?

Results (benefits)

• How do these applications of the solution assist the client?
• Do they measure or quantify ROI? How, and what are the results (projected and actual)?
• List of references & contacts for more information.

Elements of BD

I often get asked if I know of any best practices on how to compensate sales and business development professionals. This topic has been a moving target since the first sale of anything ever happened! How do companies balance their need for more sales against the motivations and drivers of their sales and business development people in order to get what everyone wants?

You won’t get the silver bullet in this post, however, we’ve made observations worth sharing. Part of the problem is that the One-Size-Fits-All-Sales-People Compensation Program that companies adopt creates that moving target that makes you crazy. If the “one size fits all” doesn’t work, then a more flexible structure could be explored.

More

I think a sales compensation system could be based on two things (HR and accounting folks will cringe because this will require more work for them):

1. Strengths of each sales/business development professional
2. The specific business development activities they accomplish

Let me tell you what I mean by these. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses. Some sales and business development people are excellent at building relationships, others at qualifying leads and others at closing the deal. What if a company would pay their sales people to do more of what each sales person is good at?

See if the attached graphic explains what I mean. When we do an analysis of the Business Development Function for our clients, we use a fabulous graphic, designed by Lissa Levinson, to highlight the many activities needed to complete the “race” of business development. (download it here elements-of-bizdev-flyer ) Each one of these activities is worth something to an organization. Perhaps the organization places a high value on information and intelligence collected on prospects. The test to gauge how much value a company places on information is to watch how comfortable management feels when sales people leave with all the data they collected on prospects while on company time.

Or perhaps the organization doesn’t care as much for the contact data or even for relationships built but just wants the revenue numbers to grow. Period. In every case, the compensation structure for each sales person could be built around the specifics of what management truly values. Those specifics would then be married to the strengths of their sales force. Different compensation programs for different strengths.

Is there a company out there doing this? I’d be interested to hear what others think.