Recently in Marketing & Sales

By Ed McLean, Sales Itch

Sales philosophies and actions are at the core of good business itself

When I was at school I liked the idea of being a businessman, with high powered meetings, traveling around meeting influential people and striking deals. Aside from setting up your own business or running someone else's sales is the profession closest to that school boy's dream. Ultimately, good sales and good business require many of the same perspectives and actions.

Consider the GetAbstract summary of the book The Definitive Drucker. Drucker has often been called the Father of Modern Management, but his teachings on how to be successful in business were remarkably similar to how to be successful in sales. Consider the following 7 points that summarize his advice to business leaders:

• Be customer centric - Customers belong at the center of all business decisions. The purpose of a business is to create and serve a customer. Sales people find customers, discover and develop their issues/problems (create the customer) and then design and deliver a solution (serve the customer)
• Be selective - Decide who is your customer, and who is not your customer -- sales people decide on a target market and then carefully qualify each prospect, hand-picking the opportunities to spend time on.
• Identify and deliver value - What does your customer consider value? Possibly the ultimate question for the sales person to find the answer to.
• Be proactive - Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work; Sales is one of the most active disciplines in the modern business. As IBM's Thomas Watson said, "Nothing happens until someone sells something".
  
• ...but Don't confuse motion with progress. - it's all about results.
• Ask the right questions Ask probing questions to drill down to the essential issues.
• Look outside of your business -- Strong business leaders focus on the outside world, where customers and competitors are. Just like sales do, day in, day out.

Drucker's perspective should serve as a reminder to us all as sales professionals that we are at the core of the business.

Good business = good sales.

By Richard Fouts

If I asked you to write a brochure for Fortune 500 CEOs, you'd probably keep it at a high-level (one of those terms I despise, but use anyway) and you'd likely use words like competitive advantage, bottom-line business performance, innovation and globalization. All issues that your CEO audience faces everyday.

But let's tweak the assignment a bit. Write the brochure for Jeffrey Immelt. (If you don't know who he is, get out now).

Your bullshit barometer may come down a bit. You won't be quite so patronizing in your language. You'll read your standard CEO-type phrases and realize how pedantic they've become. Why?

Because when you picture someone like Jeff Immelt reading "Today's corporation needs to build innovation into its everyday culture to stay competitive in an increasingly global economy," you might even groan, because you know that's what he would do. After all, you haven't told him anything he doesn't already know (the number one failure of most marketing communications). You've haven't educated him. You haven't even said anything profound. So why should he continue reading?

Our colleagues in User Interface Design create User Personas to avoid this scenario. They already know users want computer-based applications that are intuitive and friendly. They know users prefer simplicity over complexity. Good GUI designers don't waste time on creative briefs that deliver historical analyses of what they already know. They conduct fresh "user research" to intimately understand what their audiences expect, but more importantly, how they behave and how they've changed.

Sometimes the person is real (based on some laboratory style observations) or fictitious. But even if they are imagined, the interface is designed around the known personality and behavior traits of an individual, not a bulleted lists of responsibilities  and tasks.

Dave Clark, a user interface designer for TandemSeven explains it this way: 

"Applications and portals that are based on user attributes alone often become overwhelmed with too  many features as baffled designers and developers cram in more capabilities and complexity. Personas bring the focus back to real people -- with a fresh view that can be a source of innovation. User research typically uncovers insights into unarticulated, unimagined new services and capabilities."

If you write for executives, try to get above the usual cliches. Do some digging and read about executive attributes that are personal and real. For example, read what Executive Coach Rich Gee said about senior executives in our recent interview:

"As individuals advance to executive levels, development feedback becomes increasingly important, more infrequent, and more unreliable."

Or what Eliza Collins, a frequent writer about executive success, has to say in her book Making it in Management:

"Successful executives have the capacity to tolerate ambiguity as well as possess the fortitude to be tough when necessary and to not give in to others' ideas of what is right."

These two observations of people who work with executives everyday show us that it is "lonely at the top" -- not in a cliche sort of way, but with some insight that is based upon their personal experience with executive interaction, not just something they've read or heard.

If you do some deeper homework about your audience using practices our colleagues in GUI development employ, you'll see your communications become more relevant, and more insightful.

Rather than write a brochure for a mass CEO audience, try speaking personally to just one of its participants. Think of an executive you know personally or read one of the many Jeffrey Immelt interviews. Then write him a letter. You'll be surprised at your more
conversational, more personal style. 

You might actually knock your copy up a notch or two with something like, "Several leading executives recently shared the techniques they use to burn their visions into the minds and spirits of their boards of directors. And you know what? They don't use board meetings. They don't depend on golf. And not one of them has ever engaged PowerPoint."

That might inspire a CEO to keep reading more than recounting something he or she already knows. By doing some audience homework, you'll become a source of insight, not a history lesson.

By Richard Fouts

"We need a culture that values selling," is a phrase bantered about when organizations are perceived to be getting in the salesperson’s way. But how do you change an existing culture (whatever it may be) to a sales culture? Most organizations believe that if the CEO and VP of Sales communicate the importance of selling with enough conviction it will convince the rest of the organization to rally around anything sales related. In short, they hope the culture will adapt.

While some of this may work, today's organization simply doesn't have the time. And it's never a good idea to bet your future on hope. While something like a “culture of sales” may lie in the abstract, it is ultimately linked to discrete sales processes.

Demystifying Culture
In their book, Execution, authors Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan, define culture as the sum of an organization's shared values, beliefs and norms of behavior. It is the goal of GE, for example, to be either first or second in each business they operate. That translates into behaviors that make up GE's culture, or "way of operating."

When Do Cultures Need to Change?
CEOs set out to change cultures when their renewed vision for competitiveness is inhibited by the values and beliefs of their people. Hence, GE's CEO Jeffrey Immelt believes that, in today's global economy, the key to being number one or two is more about innovation, versus the existing culture, which believes it's all about grinding costs down and increasing share through acquisition. Immelt's new initiatives reward behavior differently. Sure, costs and margins are hugely relevant, but an executive's ability to innovate has taken on a much different level of appreciation in Immelt's new GE.

The Intersection of Culture and Process
Getting people to behave, in a style that supports an executive vision takes more than posters, town meetings and pep talks (which is what most companies try). With every desired cultural attribute, such as "we're sales oriented" lies a series of processes and behaviors that need to be deliberately put into place.

Having worked at both Digital and HP I speak from my own experience. Digital had a strong cultural value of "making your numbers" and missing them wasn't tolerated. Near the end, when executives were presiding over dwindling numbers, the culture didn't change. And neither did the numbers (except that they went down). The pressure on numbers encouraged sales people to sell - including products that customers often didn't need. At HP, satisfied customers was an overriding cultural value. If you blew out your numbers, but had unhappy customers (or co-workers that disliked working with you), you received a bad performance review. If you delivered happy, loyal customers, but missed your numbers, you didn't necessarily get a bad report card. You got advice and guidance on how to get more happy customers.

So before you roll out an internal communications campaign to rally the troops around a new set of desired values, identify the behavior (and processes) that connect your idea of cultural nirvana to a working engine with the cogs and wheels it needs to properly deliver. Redefine reward structures. Map processes around your new vision of what it means to be competitive. Then get the communications campaign rolling. Without process, you have nothing to communicate other than a nice dream.

For some additional insight on the relationship between culture and execution, I highly recommend the aforementioned book, appropriately titled, Execution, by Bossidy and Charan.

By Richard Fouts, Comunicado

Here is my plea to business communicators everywhere  -- please take another look at your corporate descriptor. Would your grandmother understand it well enough to tell her friends "what you do?"

Consider this descriptor from an up-and-coming software company:

"We market enterprise mobility solutions that let you capitalize on the powerful new advantages of the real-time enterprise - accelerating revenue growth, productivity, operational efficiency and profitability, helping you make faster, better decisions."

Yikes. I challenge anyone to tell me what this company does (in words my grandmother would understand).   

What's Your Seven Word Blurb?
Ilise Benun mentors business executives and marketers in the art of self-promotion. Her seven-word blurb exercise has you express what your company provides in seven words or less. By keeping it this short, you're not tempted to throw in a bunch of words that don't add value. For example:

Good: We sell retirement plans.
Better: We assure you retire comfortably.

Good: We offer vacations the whole family will enjoy.
Better: We market family leisure and fun.

Good: We make movies.
Better: We market entertainment

I know what you’re thinking. Consumer communicators have it much easier than we B2B types and you’re not entirely wrong. Business is complicated. And IT companies, in particular, are challenged.  Here are some that are good, but could be even better:

Good: M5 Networks outsources IP phone systems.
Better: We relieve you of managing telephone systems.

Good: GEInsurance sells a wide range of insurance products
Better: We protect people, property and reputations.

Good: IBM helps small companies get on the Internet.
Better: We help small companies do business online.

If organizations as big and complex as IBM can do it, so can you.  Remember, it's hard to write short so give yourself a break. Just keep asking yourself if grandma would get it.

By Jill Konrath, Selling to Big Companies

Nobody wants to buy your product, service or solution. Nor do they even want to hear about it - unless they're desperately in need of a solution.

So what do most sellers do to remedy this situation? They try to convince prospective customers just how wonderful their offering is. As I repeatedly mention in Selling to Big Companies, this self-serving pablum actually turns customers off.

Six months ago, David Meerman Scott, in partnership with Factiva, wrote The Gobbledygook Manifesto. This blog post analyzes business terms used in over 388,000 press releases sent in 2006. Like me, David  has a real aversion to  companies who describe their offering as flexible, robust and world class.

When you use these types of terms, you may think you stand out from the crowd. Instead you sound just like everyone else - including all your competitors. You'll be shocked when you take a detailed look at his Gobbledygook Volume Analysis.

If you want to be successful in sales, use value propositions. Focus on the tangible business results your product or service offers. For more info on this topic, check out:

•  Making a Difference
•  Stop Sounding Like a Self-Serving Salesperson
•  Developing Strong Value Propositions

You might want to also check out David's follow-up article to his initial gobbledygook post on "Online viral thought leadership works - here is the proof."

By Lorne Pike, Tacamor

There are huge ties that bind sales and customer service together. It encourages companies to make sure they deliver great customer service. It knows that it costs five times more to bring in a new customer than it does to sell additional services to a client you already have.

Hmmm, with figures like that, you'd think that more companies "got it." But you don't need to spend much time waiting on hold for "customer service" departments, or desperately searching "Contact Us" pages to find even one phone number, to realize that far too few companies get it at all.

I remember seeing some great research years ago, showing that four broad factors influence which stores or businesses we choose to visit. Those factors are: 1) the specific situation surrounding this actual purchase; 2) the general environment in which we’re shopping, stretching from our own “chemistry” that will determine our tastes and styles, to the overall economy in which we’re shopping; 3) the presentation and promotions from competing stores or services; and 4) each store’s own presentation and promotions.

Admittedly, those are very broad factors. But they drive home one very important point. Of the four factors that influence us, each business only has any influence at all on the last one — its own presentation and promotions. That means that companies had better be really good at understanding those other factors, and at making sure their own presentation and promotions respond to them as impressively as possible.

That’s not hard to get. But, incredibly, far too many companies spend far too much time figuring out what they want to say, instead of paying attention to what their customers want. Customers want to know they’re important, and appreciated, and cared for. They want to know companies see them and listen to them and respond to them. They want to know that companies “get it.”

But many companies simply don’t. And, sadly, there are more things that those companies probably simply won't get. They won't get your business. Or my business. Or the business of others who like to be treated with respect and gratitude for the dollars they leave behind.

How about you? Operating a business or not-for-profit? Maybe "just" operating a family? Try smiling and saying thank-you with every interaction. Try listening hard to feedback, and correcting any things that bug people. Try "service with a smile" that actually does have a smile. You might be surprised at the smiles that pop up in return. And the rewards that come with them.

Don't think of it as customer service. Think of it as sales. Because that's exactly what it is.

By Nigel Edelshain, Sales 2.0 The companies I talk to are always looking for sales "hunters".  It's almost a sure thing that if a sales candidate says they are a "farmer" then they are out.  But why are farmers so uncool?

Hosting Brain Carroll's webinar reminded me of the importance of lead nurturing.  It's clear from Brian's research that companies that stay-in-touch with target buyers greatly increase their revenue (one piece of data: leads that are not ready to buy today are 77% of all leads coming in to your company.)  But lead nurturing is another way of saying farming.  So companies that utilize only hunting techniques will do far worse than companies that farm.

If we want our sales outcomes in the future dramatically improve, perhaps we need to think of our human history in agriculture.  Once upon a time there was only hunting - no farming.  Many companies still run their lead generation efforts like early man, foraging in the forest for wild berries and boar.

Here's a very brief history of agriculture I found on a Rice University website. The beginning seems to have many parallels to how sales and marketing works in many companies:

Before agriculture, people lived by hunting wild animals and gathering edible plants. When the herds were plentiful and the plants flourishing, life was good. But, when the herds migrated elsewhere, people had to follow them and often discover a whole new set of plants to supplement their diet.

This "feast or famine" lifestyle had its definite drawbacks including starvation.

Eventually, people decided that life would be a lot easier if they always had the animals with them and if edible plants or their produce were always available.

So are farmers so uncool?

By Nigel Edelshain, Sales 2.0 My observations over the last eighteen months suggested that we were developing a huge gap between the supply and demand for sales people.  A few months ago I saw a report that put some data behind my empirical observations.  The authors of the report, CityEconomist, found that in the last two years IT sales and marketing job vacancies have grown 132%.

Add to this the fact that many firms are unhappy with the sales people they already have (one of my consulting partners states that from his research as many as 50% of the people working in sales should not be and another 25% should be selling a different product!)

So my advice for owners and senior managers:  if you have good sales people, treat them really really well.  Don't skimp on the support you give them and realize that paying them a little more is likely to be a lot cheaper than going out to the marketplace.  Do not fall into the trap of thinking of sales people as "second class citizens".

There is a talent war going on for sales people. Mind the (talent) gap!

By Nigel Edelshain, Sales 2.0 I had the opportunity to be a buyer of some B2B services last month.  The seller in this case is begging us to waste a lot of his time. 

He keeps contacting me and the other decision-makers asking to send us a proposal but there's one major problem - he did not get us interested in his product in the first place!

It's odd to me that so many sales people (and business owners) want to send out proposals.  Proposals take time to write (even with templates or proposal generators).  We are all extremely short on time.  As a sales manager and business owner, I don't care how many proposals you "have out".  I care about how many deals (and dollars) you close.

From what I have seen too many sales people beg clients to receive a proposal from them when they have not sold the decision-makers on their proposition. 

In the situation I encountered the sales person conducted a very mediocre sales presentation that was very light on probing questions and way too heavy on him being a "talking head".  The decision-making team would never had said "yes" if the seller had asked "are you interested?" but he did not ask, he said "I would love to send you a proposal". 

Well, what do we lose as buyers by allowing him to send us a proposal?  We don't have to spend any time on writing the proposal and hey there might be some useful information in there (maybe we could use some of it in a discussion with his competitors)!

Your objective is to sell everyone in the decision-making process.  You can use documents to help sell these people but you should aim to "co-author" these documents with the decision-makers not guess what they want and write up your guess in a proposal. 

If you guess what people want, you will usually be wrong.  They will not call you back and you won't get a deal.  Your proposal will have gone to "Neverland".

By Nigel Edelshain, Sales 2.0 Why do so many companies feel they need to hire "rock star" sales people?

I hear this quite often when companies are hiring sales people.  What does it really mean?  The description the companies give usually goes like this:

• Must have made, or exceeded quota, for the last five years
• Must have a great Rolodex of contacts in [our niche]
• Must be high-energy
• Must be a team player
• Must be comfortable with large amounts of cold calling
...plus several other characteristics...

It seems like the company is hoping that this sales "rock star" (a.k.a. "sales god") will walk through the door and solve all their problems in one single "bolt of lightening".  To me, this seems like an abdication of responsibility. 

Why should a company need a "rock star" when they understand how sales works in their business?  If they understand their sales process, could they not just hire an "ordinary sales person" (or even "an ordinary person") and train them to do the job really well?

Shouldn't a company take the responsibility to nurture relationships into leads in their own market niche?  Why should the sales person have to bring a "golden Rolodex"?  Shouldn't the company be building that over its years of existence?

If this sales person is so successful over so many years, is the company so great at what it does that this “rock star” is going to want to join?  Does the company really dominate its market or have the next iPod as a product?

Is your company really in the position to pay "mega bucks" to Bruce Springsteen or Bono (and would Bruce or Bono even want to come to work for you at any price) or do you need to hire some "ordinary people" and turn them into great sales people?

By Brian Carroll, InTouch

Many things with lead generation seem easier than they are. Take sales lead follow-up for example, research shows that sales people do not fully pursue around 70% of leads generated by marketing. That amounts to literally billions of wasted marketing dollars. The speed of lead follow-up is a major contributor to this problem.

KnowledgeStorm and The Artemis Group just completed a benchmarking study of best practices for pursuing online leads (registration required). They concluded, "Leads get cold quickly, so it is vital that vendors implement prompt, effective lead follow-up processes."

I’ve closed-the-loop on thousands of leads with clients and unquestionably, the speed of follow-up and the degree of lead acceptance by the sales team has a major impact on ROI.

One of my clients; centrally qualifies all their leads (via phone) against their universal lead definition with in 2-hours, distributes and requires their field sales force to follow up on those that are sales ready within 8-hours. They generate 12,000 inquiries per year, mostly via their website.

If a qualified sales lead is not followed up by the assigned sales person with in 24-hours, they can count on a call from their sales manager. If a sales lead goes more than 48-hours before being touched, that sales person risks having that lead assigned to someone else – someone with more selling time capacity.

Does that seem a bit too militant for your taste? Perhaps. For them it works. They have an amazing lead conversion rate, which is triple the amount of their industry peers. They are successfully beating three Fortune 500 competitors who are 50 times their size.

One final thought, If your sales team cannot turn leads back over for additional lead nurturing you are just throwing a lot of your budget on the scrap heap.

We have discovered that 30% - 45% of leads that were not considered viable opportunities by the sales team actually became sales ready opportunities within 12-months. This client re-captured a $1.2 million dollars per quarter in revenue by simply giving their sales team the ability to hand the baton back and recycle their leads.

By Brian Carroll, InTouch

A dilemma faced by many senior executives is whether to put more money into sales or into marketing. Often, they feel it is better to hire more sales people to increase sales than investing more money into lead generation programs.

Contrarily, my research shows that for the complex sale, it is far more effective to support proven sales people with good lead generation than hiring additional sales people.

A new white paper by CSO Insights supports my research and shows that companies that support their sales teams with lead generation programs have higher conversion rates and increased sales effectiveness than those who don't.

I interviewed Barry Trailer, Partner of CSO Insights about their White Paper, "Optimizing Lead Generation - What's the Payback?" He said, "Our findings support that improved lead generation positively impacts sales team effectiveness and revenue.  When companies increase the quantity and quality of their leads, they increase the odds of winning sales." 

Among other things, CSO Insights data from 1,275 companies shows that those excelling in lead generation gain the following advantages over companies that do not:

• Win rates are 7 percent higher
• Number of sales representatives making quota is 9.3 percent higher
• Conversion rate from leads to first calls is 16.5 percent higher
• More than 10 percent decrease in ramp up time for new sales people

I expect there will be more research on this very important subject. 

You can download the white paper here (registration required). 

By Nigel Edelshain, Sales 2.0 A great amount of sales success comes back to good time management.  Here is another example: meeting preparation.

Sales people work so hard to "get in the door" with key buyers and influencers that they owe it to themselves not to blow the critical time in front of the prospect.  Here is some research that supports what I have seen over-and-over again in the field...many sales people do not spend enough time preparing for meetings with prospects.

My "rule of thumb" is that you need to spend at least the same amount of time preparing for a meeting as being in the meeting itself, often more if it's an important meeting.  So if you have a one hour meeting scheduled with a prospect you need to spend at least an hour preparing.

Prospects will not react well to sales people who have failed to do their basic "situational" homework.  Your meeting with the prospect should be about asking questions to stimulate a conversation that reveals the prospect's needs.  You cannot waste time asking questions that could have been answered by basic Internet research or by reading the prospect's annual report.  Failing to review your prospect's website and running the prospect him/herself through Google is now considered to be plainly sloppy by most prospects.

So look at your calendar for this month and schedule in time to prepare for each upcoming prospect meeting.  Preparation may seem boring to some sales people but true sales professionals know it's time very well invested.

By Nigel Edelshain, Sales 2.0

I am "huge" on preparing for sales meetings but I am "tiny" on preparing slides for sales meetings.

Quote of the week from a sales manager friend:

"Our best sales people really don't take anything to a sales meeting - they just have a conversation with the prospect"

Amen!

Your goal in a sales meeting is to listen.  Not to present.  You don't need slides or stacks of brochures to listen.  Ask questions and listen.  Sure, take some blank paper on which to write notes, so you remember the prospect's answers to your questions.

Do take time to prepare for the meeting.  Spend this time on researching the prospect's company and the prospect themselves from as many angles as possible (relative to the importance of the prospect).  Develop key questions based on your research aimed at further understanding the prospect's goals, challenges and constraints.  Write these questions down on your piece of paper so you remember to ask them when you are actually in the meeting (it's easy to forget a question, or two, while in a live sales meeting).

So next time you go to a sales meeting don't spend hours preparing your Powerpoint slides, spend hours understanding your prospect and developing your questions.  Put your questions in your pocket and leave your hands free for a pen to write down the prospects answers.

By Richard Fouts, Comunicado

in·no·va·tion (from dictionary.com)

"the act of making a change or a new arrangement; doing something new or different; the act of starting something for the first time"

If you're not selling your solution based on its ability to innovate, perhaps you should start.

Through 2010, business innovation will remain a top 10 business initiative among Global 1000 companies. In fact, 90 percent of executives from this esteemed body say innovation is key to their survival (Gartner research).

By 2010, products representing more than 70 percent of today's sales will be obsolete due to changing customer demands and competitive offerings. (2005 Global Benchmark of Manufacturers, Deloitte and Touche).
54 percent of CEOs surveyed by IBM expect to radically change their companies over the next two years. These execs also plan to innovate operational and business models to drive business growth.

Participants in the 2006 World Economic Forum said innovation in creativity and design will make 20th century structures obsolete, replaced by new models and more flexible business processes that serve more diverse, more global audiences.

Selling the ways your product and solutions deliver innovation, can take place at several levels and in various discussion frameworks, starting with the CEO or members of the CEO staff. Senior executives are clearly the ones putting priority on innovation - and they are the ones that can fund it.

Focus not just on business strategy, but process and culture. Our good friends at futurethink have tools and techniques for making innovation part of an organization's everyday culture. You'll get attention if you can show how your solution drives long term innovation, versus incremental improvement. Check them out at getfuturethink.com

Focus on people, not just technology. The enabler of change is most often identified in technology terms, but be careful not to let technology inhibit your efforts. If you have to choose, go for process innovation that is not dependent on big involvement from IT.

Find the person accountable for innovation processes, practices or learning. Many organizations have put such a person in place -- and it won't hurt to ask. The owner of innovation ensures that people remain engaged in the ongoing process, not just the occasional brainstorm.

By Nigel Edelshain, Sales 2.0

Sales people use the telephone, marketing people write...but either way both have the same goal - leads.

When I talk to sales people about prospecting they immediately think "telephone".  When I talk to marketing people about lead generation they immediately think about writing something - letter, email, website etc.

But actually over time I have come to believe that the best way to generate leads is by using a "multimedia" approach.  By combining the telephone with letters, email and multi-dimensional mailers (books, gifts etc.) you increase your chances of finding the "medium" that appeals to that particular executive.

During my sales career I have found that some prospects regularly answer their telephone, some never seem to answer their phone, some people respond instantly to email (and carry their Blackberry or Treo everywhere), and some people need to receive a good old-fashioned letter before they respond.

I have personally experienced several situations where sending executives something creative like a gift basket with customized contents and then following up consistently by phone finally landed a meeting with a very hard to reach CEO, CFO or CIO.

Several other sales experts have written about the need to use "multimedia" in your prospecting. You can read more from Jill Konrath, Brian Carroll and Jim Logan.

So when prospecting don't put all your eggs in one basket...go multimedia!

By Brian Carroll

Ask most executives and marketers what sales people need and they will say, "more leads." Your sales people don’t want more leads actually, what they want is "more effective selling time."

A recent report by Aberdeen Group, “Sales Effectiveness: Helping Sales Sell” concludes, “The number one issue for most CEO's and Marketers is lead generation - getting more leads to their sales team." The number one desire for sales people however, is MORE selling time with “sales ready” opportunities.

Don't get me wrong, lead generation is still extremely important to sales people (it was actually number 2). You must realize that the extreme time pressure sales people face – especially those with a complex sale - requires them to ignore what is not immediately relevant and highly likely to produce revenue. Why? They are not paid to do anything else.  Quality is more important than quantity. 

A study of 1,535 professionals by CSO Insights in cooperation with CRMGuru.com, uncovered a wealth of insights in to the challenges sales forces are encountering today. Top 10 Trends in Sales for 2004.

I found this post on Jim Berkowitz's CRM Mastery Blog highly relevant, "Is Your Sales Force Selling?" Jim links to Proudfoot Consulting's annual sales force effectiveness study; most salespeople spend only 10 percent of their available time actually selling, according to the latest figures from Proudfoot Consulting's annual sales force effectiveness study.

I disagree with Proudfoot's 10% figure but, think their premise is on point.  Simply put, sales people don't get to spend enough time actually selling! 

In my experience, the average sales force spends around 20% of their time actually doing productive selling (upto 40% if you're great) based on research done by the Huthwaite, Inc. -- Creators of SPIN Selling.

As marketers we can do a ton to help improve sales effectiveness.  So before you invest any more money in lead generation ask this question, how can we give our sales people more selling time? Then write down your thoughts and meet with your sales team and ask them the same question. How can we help YOU get more selling time? Now shut up and really listen... The key is to communicate and then collaborate. 

Here’s a short vignette on how 3M increased their sales teams effective selling time by leveraging Six Sigma.   

By Nigel Edelshain, Sales 2.0 Sales is a profession rife with cliches. 

One of the most popular is "sales is a numbers game" The dangerous part about this expression is how it gets used: "we don't need to be smart [about our prospecting]...it's just a numbers game"

This is where I disagree.  Sure prospecting is a numbers game but the "numbers" in question, how many meetings you get or how many sales you make, are strongly determined not only by the number of calls you make but also by the quality of what you have to say.

Executives all over the world are bombarded by sales people with badly crafted pitches. They absolutely don't have time to respond to these badly thought out propositions.  If you want to get a meeting, or sell a product directly, you need to spend the time to come up with a truly strong value proposition. 

You need to do your homework on the prospect's company and the prospect themselves so you can hit one of their hot buttons with your voice mail (let's be realistic here, we get voice mail 70% of the time or more)  For more on crafting quality voicemails see this previous post based on a great piece by Jill Konrath.

So I agree that "sales is a numbers game" but it's up to you to decide if you want your numbers (a.k.a. chances of success) to be 1 in 10 or 1 in 1,000.

By Brian Carroll, InTouch

Most buyers aren't ready to buy when we're ready to sell. This trite but true observation has significant implications when it comes to lead generation.  It means that we must continue to nurture viable prospects until they are ready to buy. But what about the prospects who are not in your nurturing database yet?

This dilemma has led me to think about how trigger events are related to one of the basic laws of physics. Newton’s first law of motion (also called the law of inertia) is often stated as “an object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in motion tends to stay in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.”

The first law of motion can act much like one of your potential prospects.  Unless there is an “unbalancing force” acting on them that is sufficient to move them away from the status quo (as rest), then they will not change their direction.  In this context, trigger events can be seen as the sufficient force or event that moved and changed the status quo.

So in the context of lead generation, what’s a trigger event? A trigger is a happening associated with a consequence so significant that it causes new behaviors, new ideas and new opportunities. One of my clients found companies with their key trigger events was 400% more likely to buy than companies without those trigger events.

When InTouch conducts an ideal customer profile workshop for a client, we help them understand favorable trigger events and related implications. The above trigger event mind map figure (Click Image to Enlarge) shows just some of the possible trigger events that you can track.

Trigger events matter for two key reasons. First, they may indicate the status quo in an organization is changing and secondly, they can contribute to the development of timely and relevant sales and marketing messaging. Relevance is one of the most difficult things to achieve with lead generation programs but trigger events can help a great deal.

Messaging that addresses (in a personalized manner) a specific problem that your prospect is having is more relevant and thus will be more effective than a generic features and benefits message. What’s better is that the problem can often be tied to a specific event or events.

There are three basic steps if you want start using trigger events:

1. Review 10 - 15 recent sales "wins" and look at what business pains or events were present. (See the above mind map for examples)
2. Develop an intelligent system to identify when your trigger events happen.
3. Understand trigger event implications and what to do once they happen.

You can research new business opportunities based on trigger events, for little to no cost, by leveraging press releases, websites and news wires. If you have a corporate librarian or local business library they can help you find what you need.

To begin collecting trigger events, I'd start with using free tools like the following:

• Technorati watchlists
• Google news alerts via email
• Yahoo! RSS feeds & via email

Don’t try to do everything at once. Start with some basic trigger events and then build upon your foundation over time. Remember it’s an iterative process… you want to first crawl, walk and then run. As your sophistication grows, you will be ready to look into third party tools that specialize in tracking trigger events. 

Trigger event are a great way to change the physics of the buying process and yet another way that we marketers can to go beyond the lead.

Are you using trigger events? I'd love to hear your comments or experiences.

BTW - You can read more about trigger events in Chapter 5 of Lead Generation for the Complex Sale or search my blog archives for "trigger event." Also, Jill Konrath has some great information on trigger events (geared for sales people) in her book Selling to Big Companies and her blog too.

By Brian Carroll, InTouch

The best mindset, strategy and tactics – and the most astute sales and marketing individuals – are for naught without the collaboration of everyone involved. The unrealized potential can be likened to the batteries in a flashlight. If the batteries aren’t inserted in the right direction or are otherwise out of proper contact, their latent power is unusable.

Likewise, the harmonious interaction of sales and marketing is crucial. If they are askew and going in dissimilar directions, sales and marketing will not empower a successful complex sale or sales lead strategy. Bottom-line sales performance reflects just how well sales and marketing are working together.

I liked the collaboration tips in Sherri Leopard's article, "Five Steps to Connect Marketing to Sales, and Sales to Financial Results" in MarketingProfs.com (requires subscription).

I've summarized Leopard’s tips with my thoughts below:

• Sales and Marketing must collaborate on defining leads and marketing objectives.
• What gets measured gets done. Connect sales and marketing metrics together.
• Focus on the data points you REALLY need to measure in your CRM.
• Is your value proposition clear? Does your sales team have sales-ready messaging?
• Create content that's relevant for each stage of the buying cycle.
• Simply put, what matters most is having everyone on the same page, integrated and respecting one another. If you can't do that, your brilliant lead generation plans and tactics won't matter.

By Dan Pincus, World Golfs

• Have you ever gone to a networking function and got stuck in a long conversation with someone that you really did not want to talk to. But had problems politely saying can we follow up later? 

• Have you ever been to a networking function and wondered who was in a room and who you wanted to get in front of?
  
  
• Have you ever saw a name badge and said I would like to speak to that person but they were always in a conversation with others?
  
  
• Have you ever gone to a great networking function and just wished you had more time to meet more people?
  
  
• Have you ever wished there was a faster, better way to get in front of more people?

Speed networking, if executed properly, can get you in front of almost 50 people in less than 2 hours. At ordinary networking events the most people you can realistically hope to meet in an evening is between six and eight.  Speed networking works when you have a lot of people in a room and you want to give everyone a chance to "get through the crowd and have a quick introduction". Speed networking is not actually networking, it is an introductory process of getting each participant in front of many people in a short period of time. The actual networking begins after the event when people follow up with relevant contacts and set a time and place to learn about each other and how they can help each other.

If you’ve never been to a speed networking event, you can expect to see 50-100 people meeting at a central location.  After registration the organizer or keynote speaker gives a short talk on aspects of networking.  A speed networking session usually lasts for one hour. This entails placing two people at a table, one person is the ‘mover’ and the other is the ‘shaker.’ When a whistle blows the mover moves to the next table. You have 90 seconds to talk to your ‘shaker’ about your business.  A whistle blows again and they reciprocate and talk to you about their business.  You then move on to the next person and repeat the process. It’s as simple as that.

Attending a networking function should be based on two basic elements:  who you want to get in front of and who you want in the room.  For example, if you are a business owner, you probably would like to meet other business owners and decision makers. In this circumstance you probably want to join or attend networking functions that have this type of audience.

The bottom line for why you would want to go to a speed networking event over a general cocktail party is that if you are a busy person with limited time then there are few ways better to meet many people in a short period of time. And as always there are a few gem individuals out there in the crowd which could change your business. Some of those people may find you financing, some may want to partner up with you, some may be clients, some may be referral sources, and so much more. The only way to find this out is to spend the time with as many people as you can and try and qualify the audience so that your time is well spent.
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By Richard Fouts, Comunicado

I often ask sales people to describe what they do in seven words or less. Many initially say they can't possibly communicate the complexity of what they do in seven words. But they can - and they do.

For example:

> We help you comfortably retire. (Fidelity)
> We protect companies, lives and reputations. (GE Insurance)
> We help companies do business online. (IBM)

When I did this exercise for a bunch of Wharton graduates recently, someone asked, "Why seven?"

Studies have shown that there's actually a natural rhythm and ring to the number seven. George Miller (a cognitive psychologist) in his 1956 paper, The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two, details why seven is pretty much the cut-off point when it comes to recalling things like lists or quotes.

One account executive pitched the services of his firm to me the other day - telling me how his company could conduct leadership coaching for the CEO - and offer management techniques for developing greater influence with boards of directors. The company also helps its clients develop recruiting strategies to attract top talent and develops programs for employee retention. They help companies create innovative techniques for improving HR performance - and "oh yes," he concluded - "we also do HR outsourcing and we have unique insight into change management and succession planning."

Without looking up, how many of these services can you recall?

If you're really good, you'll remember seven, but most people will recall three to five. To improve retention, Miller suggests we put things in categories, something the human brain responds to quite naturally. So the next time you articulate a barrel of benefits, take a step back, think of natural categories - and you'll make a more memorable impression.

The next time this eager account executive calls on someone, he's promised to focus on two things: Leadership and Talent. Now isn't that much easier on the memory?

By Brian Carroll

Jeff Thull, author of Mastering the Complex Sale, recently published an article, "Sales and The CEO," that puts CEOs at the head of the sales department. To me, this is solid thinking for heads of companies who offer products with long sales cycles. In the article, Thull emphasizes the key role that CEOs play in developing a successful go-to-market strategy – they must be involved, because there is so much for sales and marketing to agree upon that guidance and direction must come from the top.

Often, the biggest obstacle to go-to-market success is the absence of execution. The lack of synergy between sales and marketing on lead generation is so common as to risk cliche. It goes like this:  marketing feels that sales doesn’t follow up on marketing-generated leads. Sales counters that the “leads” aren’t any good. It’s a vicious, no-win cycle.

The CMO Council recently surveyed 800 senior marketing and C-level executives and found that just 7 percent of the respondents admitted that their sales and marketing departments were complementing partners in harvesting ROI from sales leads.1  

I've interviewed hundreds of companies, and less than 10% have a clear, written, company-wide definition of what constitutes a sales lead. Even in small companies, I can ask three sales people “what is a sales lead to you?” and get three different answers.

Like the complex sale, lead generation, with its many facets and interactions, can be properly sparked only by the CEO who believes in it and creates a culture to support it. CEOs can make a huge impact by focusing on collaboration between sales and marketing and seeking consensus on the following three things:

1.    Defining the company’s Ideal Customer Profile (across the company – for each product, service, or solution).

2.    Creating a Universal Lead Definition – a definition of a "sales ready" lead that's applied to all inquires/leads.

3.    Connecting the marketing/sales process with the customer’s buying process.

Just by developing item one, an Ideal Customer Profile, InTouch saw one client's average sale, which had been $60,000, increase by more than 30 percent to $80,000, while overall revenue increased by 20 percent. This improvement resulted from the fact that the sales team focused on fewer opportunities - requiring the same effort as before - but the results were of much higher quality.

Another client chose to build consensus on their Universal Lead Definition and ensured the sales department’s total buy-in. With the same tactics and budget as the previous year, return on investment improved 120 percent. The full agreement between sales and marketing on a universal lead definition was credited as being the crucial success factor.

A key goal of many CEOs for their marketing department is to answer this critical question: "What is our marketing team's contribution to sales revenue?" One management tool that can help provide some answers is the lead generation dashboard – a tool that provides an instant status quo of marketing efforts in lead generation. It also provides guidance on how and where to make adjustments when they are required for success.

If the CEO isn’t an active supporter of marketing in the company, the proper environment for good, sound lead generation is far removed from reality. The CEO, after all, shapes the vision of the company and sets the tone for its corporate culture.

In the absence of CEO support, I believe marketers are in the unique position of being catalysts for change in lead generation. Ultimately, it becomes the job of the marketer to lead the charge in pursuit of success of the company’s lead generation program.

The first step is to develop a collaborative culture by focusing on the three items noted above. Then commit to closing the loop on each marketing investment, which includes all sales leads.

I've conducted dozens of lead generation collaboration workshops to facilitate this process for sales and marketing teams engaged in complex sales. The workshops explain the basic steps on developing a universal lead definition. In addition, this topic is detailed in Chapter 3 of my new book.

Good hunting!

1 "Gauging the Cost of What's Lost: Improve the Return on Resource Burn," (CMO Council, November 2004), p 11.

Brian Carroll is CEO of InTouch, Inc., which provides a variety of lead generation services; he is also the author of the newly released Lead Generation for the Complex Sale (McGraw-Hill, 2006).

By Lee Salz, Sales Dodo

The falling-out between the Yankees and Joe Torre happens every day in business. Sales people can learn a lot from the experience.

This is the time of year when salespeople begin to reflect on their performance. Was it a good year? Was it a great year? Some will say they earned the dollars they desired, so it was a great year. Others will hang their hat on an account that they won and say it was a good year.

However, as Joe Torre, former manager of the New York Yankees recently learned, employers have a single data point for measuring success that dwarfs all other statistics. As the New York Yankees were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs, the rumors began to swirl that their manager, Joe Torre, was not got going to be asked to return as manager in 2008.

As Joe Torre described, he arrived at the Yankees’ executive meeting in Tampa and saw a room full of successful business executives who were looking to continue that success. Joe is a former baseball player, broadcaster, and manager, but not typically referred to as a business professional. He was caught off guard by the business presence in the room. What took place next was even more interesting.

The team told him that they desired his return in 2008. However, they wanted to restructure his compensation plan. They offered him a salary that was significantly lower than what he had been paid in the past. The plan included incentives that, if achieved, made the contract worth more than the prior one.

Just like in baseball, sales is full of statistics, metrics, and measurements. On any given day, one can make a case for promoting or firing just about any member of the sales team. During review time, the business leaders go back to the specified objective. Did the team make mission? Sure, great things happen throughout the year, things for which to be proud. However, at the end of the day, there is one key for the sales professional. Was mission achieved?

Joe Torre is described as a great man, a classy individual. Sometimes these terms are used to describe members of a sales team. However, those characteristics don’t result in pay increases or promotions. Companies pay for performance. This is performance that ties back to the business objective.

It is not uncommon to find sales professionals who fail to meet the business objective, which is usually quota, citing various statistics and anecdotes to show that there is value in their performance. Yes, there is value, but something simple is missing; bottom line. The business objective was not met.

The bottom line for sales people is that they need to understand the business objective, identify what they need to achieve it, and deliver the expected results. At the end of the day, that is the only way sales people will be measured.