Selling some of it is intuition

I had an early morning coffee with one of the most successful technology sales people in Europe this morning. This guy has closed both high value and low value deals all around the world. Every time I meet him he leaves me with nuggets of wisdom that are worth considering. Here are six I jotted down this morning:

Complex sales will require multiple channels of communications with the prospect. Inevitably when the deal sizes get interesting channel dynamics & personalities will emerge. You need to think like the partner if you are going to get one of the big boys to joint bid with you. The value you bring needs to be clear to them and to the customer. If having your organization involved in the joint bid doesn’t strengthen a partners position considerably, they just won’t have you on their bid team.

The sales guys that are doing deals right now have the ability to present the business case for a major sale with a CEO in the morning and then get on the phone and progress a smaller €100,000 deal in the afternoon, gone are the days your sales number will be achieved by just focusing on the big deals. Selling requires some street fighting (in the nicest possible way of course) ·

Lots of small deals are lost by forcing a yes no decision (T Junction) too early. You need to avoid taking the prospect to a T Junction too quickly, nurture the relationship and seek out the compelling event. Your solution needs to be must have, not a nice to have. Lots of sales people forget this.

When selling to the public sector abroad, obey the price envelopes that are set down, failure to do so will result in you not being shortlisted

Sales forecasting and planning should not just be about a scientific model, you need to, look back to previous quarters, look out at the market and then apply some intuition otherwise the target that are set are unlikely to get buy in from your sales team

Selling is very much team based, it requires sales professionals, pre-sales support, technical support, finance and customer support, it’s not about one or two top people anymore.

Hope these nuggets from the field of professional selling are of use.

John O’ Gorman – sales effectiveness, sales activity

The fact is getting project approval has slowed sales down

I was on an early morning con-call this morning with a professional sales person based in Australia. He recently secured a significant deal (more than $10 million). I asked him what he was doing to face the slowdown. His reply:

“Now is a good time to knock on doors, it is important to stay focused and to stay positive about the impact your solutions can deliver. Eighteen months ago, I wasn’t too worried about looking for budget in the early part of a sales cycle. Now I am qualifying very hard a lot earlier on, we are asking questions like

• What will the board view be on a project like this?
• Where will the budget come from for this project?
• What types of cost benefit analysis will we need to work on together?
• We are being frank but at the same time respectful, its is important not to come across as being pushy.

Our sales team are drawing out the cost benefit and project justification a lot earlier in the sales cycle as part of qualification. We are working with the clients to build this so we don’t waste our time or theirs. Qualification and activity levels are the only game in town if you are going to reach your numbers”.

I hope this insight from the field is useful.

John O’ Gorman – sales coaching, sales effectiveness, sales management

Who is needed on your selling team? – 8 key roles

We all know that buying teams are getting larger and decision making is more complex. But what about your selling team? What type of sales team is needed to close a €500,000 plus deal?

I was chatting with two successfull entrepreneurs yesterday about selling complex solutions into major organisations and we began to talk about the type of sales team needed to close big ticket deals. Based on our collective experience of over 50 years in business we identified a number of key roles critical to moving opportunities from leads to meetings to sales cycles to orders.

1. A sales person – who adopts an expert selling approach – a listener

2. A pre-sales support person who knows the domain

3. A product/market expert who can talk knowledgeably about the industry

4. A Product director – the person who own the technology vision and road map, the guy who protects the IP and core

5.  A Senior developer who can be paired off with senior developers from the client/buying team

6. An account manager who can be introduced towards the end of the sales cycle – a person who has delivered similar projects, a person who has faced project delivery channels previously

7. A implementation/customer services director who owns the process for delivery, customer service and steering group reviews

8. The MD & maybe even chairman – as part of reference checking, building confidence and validation

Sales as we know it has changed forever, gone are the days that 2 people can sell high value deals without help from domain experts, technology experts and delivery experts. This fact has implications for the sales and relationship competencies across your organisation.The organisations who are closing business are holding workshops and team meetings with their key staff to remind them of their responsibility for sales. Worth a thought.

John O’ Gorman – Sales activtiy and sales success, accelerating sales growth

Closing sales – people are managing it – so what have they done

Something to be positive about: An Irish services firm that has hit their revenue target month on month for the first quarter of the year this against a backdrop of:

• Tighter budgets in the sectors they are selling to
• Their local competition closing offices and cutting headcount

In Sept 08 the situation was as follows:

• This firm didn’t have to sell proactively in years
• They had very few new local projects to work on
• They faced stiff competition for international projects
• Making contact with past clients, prospective clients was at an all time low

Over a three month period this firm took a number of key steps to address the situation:

• Firstly they asked people at the grass roots to help with business development
• Secondly they held workshops with all customer facing staff to remind people about staying in contact with clients
• Thirdly they reviewed all their old contacts, centralised them and began to make proactive contact
• Finally they started to note conversations they were having with clients at all levels and got senior staff to come along to meetings to share their insights and expertise with contacts

All quite simple you might say. Well the results have been interesting to see.

• Activity levels have increased without hiring a single sales person
• Over a six week period four of their project team handled 20 proposals and won 7
• In-house experts without any background in sales are spending a few hours a week on business development
• Their sales target hit 3 months in a row
• A new pipeline of real work that will bring delivery headaches

I highlight this story because it shows that new projects can be secured despite all the doom and gloom we hear on a daily basis and as this company proved everyone can and should contribute to business development.

John O’ Gorman – Sales activity to accelerate sales growth

What a IT director looks for in a sales person

A short post that I thought would resonate with a lot of you.

We were hosting a sales workshop recently with some senior account managers and project managers and they seemed surprised at the characteristics buyers look for from their partners and suppliers. As a result I asked a director of IT who holds a size-able budget what characteristics he looked for in the vendors/service providers he meets. His answer

• Expertise
• Listening skills
• Someone who isn’t too pushy
• Someone who is willing to say they don’t know the answer buts knows someone who doea
• People who follow up professioanlly

The message: people want to meet experts not know it alls, people who are confident in their ability and people who know what they don’t know.

John O’ Gorman – Accelerating Sales, Increasing Sales Activity

Belief and conviction in your solution/service offering will affect your close rate

If you are responsible for selling, it really helps if you have total belief in the value your solution delivers. An obvious enough statement one might think. Well not so obvious, I can tell you from listening to vendors and service provider talk about their solutions lately. Consider three questions
1. Do you have conviction when you talk about the value of your solution
2. Do you sound like you understand what it takes to deliver the solution/service you are offering
3. Do you sound like you understand how as a buyer I am feeling about the change required to implement your solution or take on your service offering

If you answer yes to all three great, if you can’t, you need to sit down and review the actual value delivered to clients in previous engagements. In my honest opinion, conviction and belief gets built with experience and real world / practical understanding of how others have gained value from your offerings no where else. And please remember, it’s not the value marketing tell you about that will help build conviction and belief into how you communicate your overall value, it’s the value customers talk about that counts, this implies extending relationships beyond the point of order.

Food for thought
John – Accelerating Sales Growth, sales planning, sales effectiveness, sales process, sales coaching

Customer Referrals: Shortening Sales Cycles: As a service business you live and die by your referrals or do you?

We have spent a considerable amount of time with sales managers and managing directors of services firms recently and have been astonished to find that less than 20% of sales people in services, firms are asking their customer base for referrals. This is despite the fact that an introduction from a respected contact will help shorten the early part of most sales cycles and increase sales activity dramatically.

When we asked 60 services professionals the question do you ask for referrals, we got answers like this:

• “That’s a good idea”
• “I hadn’t thought of that”
• “You are right all our customers would be willing to give us a referral or introduction”
• “Ehm not sure, I don’t feel comfortable asking”
• “No one ever suggested it”

The fact is if you have a strong relationship with your customer they are all only too willing to help you sell.

Let them help, go ahead and ask your customers for that referral, but before you do, be prepared for them to ask you the following:

• Who should I refer you to?
• What would you like me to say?
• Can you provide me with a few lines I can send for you?
• Have you a short bio I can attach?
• Can you provide me with a case study that maybe relevant?

Sometimes it’s the simple things that impact our overall sales effectiveness and sales success.

John O’ Gorman – Sales effectiveness, sales planning, sales activity

What do people want marketing collateral or is it sales collateral?

Now more than ever you need sales collateral not blah de blah marketing collateral. The people who read your collateral are well versed in blah, blah, value proposition this, value proposition that material. They don’t have time to read stuff that was not developed by people who understand them.

Buyers want to read material that is thought provoking and that helps them, obviously!!!

When developing your next set of sales collateral (which by the way should not cost an arm and a leg) make sure each piece developed talks to the buyer and supports their buying process. It should be developed with them in mind not your CEO’s ego.

As you know at a minimum your sales collateral should be:

• Segment specific
• Solutions focused as opposed to product focuses
• Topical
• Tailored to the decision unit & CEO-proofed
• Designed with new media delivery in mind (pdfs, forums, wikis not just expensive printed material )

If you are reading this piece and saying to yourself yes that is all common sense John, so what. Then here is what you need to think about. Your sales material must be considered in line with:

• Your sales objectives
• The stage it is used in the sales cycle
• How the collateral adds value to the selling & buying process

Sales collateral that gets results:

1. Gives a compelling reason to buy (by the way that doesn’t mean a generic value propositions)
2. Shows business impact & have some quantifiable benefits / business case
3. Have 3rd party validation
4. Offer insight and perspective

This all means the people who write sales material must understand how people buy, obviously!!!

That’s it, I am off.

John www.acceleratesalesgrowth.com, sales management, sales planning, sales coaching, sales and marketing consulting

Sales presentations that work and those that don’t

The good the bad and the ugly

Over the past 16 weeks I have had the opportunity to sit through 36 sales and marketing presentations from technology vendors and professional services companies. After the first presentation I decided I would take note of the presentations that got an enthusiastic response and those that hit a low note. If you happen to be one of the 36 people who presented to me you should know what I am going to say.

The bad

• Why do 70% of vendors start their presentation with an about us slide – maybe interesting to them but not someone who wants to understand what the vendor can do for their business
• I was left asking myself why over 50% of presenters try to use humour to kick off their presentations because they weren’t funny
• Vendors who tell buyers they can do everything……Reality experienced buyers have been around a long time, they have heard all the promises a million times, they don’t believe vendors who claim they can do everything
• Have sales people forgotten they need to take notes during presentations, its amazing to see how many people present their offering, ask a few questions during the presentation (supposedly trying to identify client needs) and forget to show the buyer on the other side of the table the respect to take note of the answers they give
• Eye contact – if you keep looking down at your notes, people begin to think you don’t really know your stuff
• Bluffing answers – the old saying goes know what you don’t know. If you don’t know the answer admit it. Bluffing rarely works and buyers can see through 9 out of 10 bluffs
• Ok please listen to this – if you have a slide with 5 bullet points and you put it up, guess what, the audience will read the five bullets and stop listening to you until they have gone from bullet 1-5 – a suggestion either use a slide build and bring one bullet in at a time or put the slide up, take a sip of water and let the audience read the slide and then make your point.

The really ugly

These things really happened I am not joking:

• Slouching in meetings with arms crossed – I felt like asking the guy if he wanted a pillow!!!!
• Checking mobiles & texting – I wouldn’t have believed it only for I witnessed it with my own eyes!
• Interrupting colleagues when they have been asked a question
• Asking what products my company sold – do your homework!!!
• Answering questions without letting the buyer complete his questions
• Clicking a pen when talking
• Leaning on a lectern looking like he was about to fall over
• Telling the audience who are risk averse that the company is small
• Wandering around the top of the room speaking at the slides
• Rocking back and forth while talking

Ok here is the good

• The presentations that went down well told stories – they used client stories to demonstrate the value they deliver, they asked questions as they were telling stories, they showed they cared
• The presenters who knew their stuff and showed they were experts earned the right to ask probing questions – people like to talk to experts especially experts who show they know the challenges faced
• The presentations that work best had a really good opening and a really good close and yes it takes practice. Over a three week period I saw 6 IT vendor presentations and only one started and ended well
• The number one presenter amongst the 36 was the one person who spoke slowly, showed confidence, smiled, used his hands to illustrate key points and asked interesting questions
• Another simple thing that goes along way, clarifying the agenda and meeting expectation before launching into a slide show
• The guys who sign-posted where they were made it easy to follow – you knew where you were. When you know where you are it is easier to pay attention and interact
• Interaction – key to every successful sales meeting. If you have been around a while you will know the questions you need to ask and you will know that the more interaction the more likely people will feel you are trying to understand them, I was in a workshop recently that lasted about 6 hours, the time flew because the vendor got us to interact for at least 50% of the time, we were asking questions and answer questions openly

I realise now I could keep writing on this topic, leave it with me I may come back to this. Got to run the baby wants a bottle. All the best

John www.acceleratesalesgrowth.com, sales management, sales planning, sales coaching, sales and marketing consulting

Sales People that sell

It struck me following two conversations yesterday with a sales manager and a highly experienced and successful CEO that there are a number of key characteristics to those people who will continue to sell successfully and those who will continue to struggle. These are three I noted from my conversations. There are many more but I would be here all day if I tried to list them all.

1. Sales is a tough profession, sales people who recognise this and take the good with the bad are the ones that do the business. Don Juan in Carlos Castaneda’s A Seperate Peace puts it well – The difference between a warrior and an ordinary man is that a warrior sees everything as a challenge, while an ordinary man sees everything as a blessing or a curse”. The sales people who succeed may not know it but they are following Don Juan’s philiosphy.

2. Sales people who are at the top of their field are the ones who are always looking to learn, they read, attend sales conferences and are hard on themselves after sales calls.  Some food for thought:

• what was the last sales book you read
• when did you last attend a sales training course
• when did you last ask for frank feedback after a sales call
• have you ever asked a customer/prospective cleint for feedback after a sales meeting?

Sales people who read and are looking to develop their sales management skills will sell more.

3.  Maybe old school given the new web 2.0 generation that is emerging but you know what when you are selling complex products you will need to be willing to build a relationship with the customer. As Brian Tracy (www.briantracy.com) says the customer doesn’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. Its worth buying one or two of Brians’ books.

All the best

John – www.acceleratesalesgrowth.com