 I moved from working in my business to working on my business!
Jim White, Founder Savor Dallas http://www.savordallas.com |
 I found a community of business leaders who make being in business a lot more fun and less lonely.
Jeannine Sandstrom, CEO CoachWorks International, Inc. http://www.coachworks.com |
 I now have a place to be open about my business success and future challenges.
Debbie Mrazek, CEO The Sales Company Author The Field Guide to Sales http://www.the-sales-company.com |
Posts Tagged ‘Sales’
Written by Alan Rigg
Depending upon how much you enjoy writing, writing sales proposals can be a joy, purgatory, or something in between. However, if you sell a complex product or one that involves the delivery of professional services, learning how to write effective sales proposals can be critical to your success.
Some proposals are written in response to an RFP (Request for Proposal) or RFI (Request for Information). Organizations that go to the trouble of writing RFP’s want to receive highly structured proposals, as this makes it easier for them to compare responses from various bidders.
Some proposals are “Boilerplate Bombs”. These proposals tend to be long, boring, and tedious to read. Often these proposals are written under the assumption that “bounce factor” (how high objects on a desk bounce when the proposal is dropped on the desk) is what makes a proposal effective.
The proposal category that is the focus of this article is effective sales proposals. These proposals are lean, highly focused, customer-specific documents that are written to sell anyone that reads them. How can a written document accomplish this feat? Through text that invokes emotion and provides compelling reasons that support a buying decision.
Before we go any further, let’s review the single most common flaw in proposal generation — lack of proper opportunity qualification. Companies waste incredible amounts of time and resources preparing proposals for poorly qualified opportunities. These proposals have little chance of producing sales.
When you are armed with the necessary opportunity qualification information and you have made a conscious decision that the opportunity warrants the investment of time and resources required to generate a quality proposal, you are ready to write an effective sales proposal. To aid you in this undertaking, here are brief descriptions of nine suggested proposal sections:
1. Opening
This is usually a single paragraph where you thank the people that provided the opportunity qualification information and set the stage for the proposal. The last sentence of the paragraph should list the primary value the prospect will receive by making the proposed investment.
2. Background
Your prospects know a lot about their own companies. They don’t need you to provide them with a chronological history or a bunch of unnecessary facts. The bulk of this section should focus on selected facts concerning the specific business functions or departments that your solution will impact.
3. Current Situation
This is where you really start selling. In this section you lay out the prospect’s business problems and the impact of the problems…in painful detail. Your goal should be to invoke your prospect’s negative emotions (fear, frustration, pain, etc.).
4. Desired Results
Your goal for this section should be to invoke your prospect’s positive emotions (relief, joy, satisfaction, etc.) by helping your prospect visualize the “desired state” for their business.
5. Business Impact
This is where you justify the acquisition. What impact will your solution have on your prospect’s business? How will their operations and financial results change for the better?
6. Decision Criteria
If you don’t have a comprehensive list of the criteria that your prospect will use to make their decision, you probably shouldn’t be writing a proposal. List all of their decision criteria here.
7. Decision Process, Time Frame, and Budget
The purpose of including this information in the proposal is to make sure you and your prospect share the same expectations.
8. Next Steps
There should be specific next steps (and related time frames) that are expected to take place after you submit your proposal. List them here to make sure you and your prospect are “on the same page”.
9. Closing
Close with a final paragraph that summarizes why your product or service is the best solution for your prospect, plus a positive statement of expectation.
Do you see the power of this type of proposal? Do you see the benefit of eliminating volumes of boilerplate that do not address your prospect’s specific and immediate needs and concerns? Do you see how an effective sales proposal can influence the thinking of decision makers and influencers, even if you have had limited (or no) personal contact with them?
If you construct your proposals in this manner, you will maximize your return on proposal writing time and resource investments.
Copyright 2004-2008 — Alan Rigg
Sales performance expert Alan Rigg is the author of How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Sales Team Performance: A Step-by-Step Guide to Building and Managing Top-Performing Sales Teams, and the companion book, How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Selling: A Step-by-Step Guide to Achieving Top Sales Performance. His company, 80/20 Sales Performance, helps business owners, executives, and managers end the frustration of 80/20 sales team performance, where 20% of salespeople produce 80% of sales. For more information and more FREE sales and sales management tips, visit http://www.8020salesperformance.com
Recently I received a prospecting voice mail message from a salesperson. The salesperson explained his company was “the leader in Microsoft hosted Exchange solutions” and he encouraged me to visit his company’s website. That was it – that was the “meat” of the voice mail message.
If you received that salesperson’s voice mail message, what would go through your mind? Do you think it might it be a question like, “What the heck is a Microsoft hosted Exchange solution?” Do you think the voice mail message would inspire you to call the salesperson back?
Why did the salesperson’s voice mail message fail to accomplish the desired end result? Because it focused on a solution rather than a problem.
If your prospecting calls and related voice mail messages talk about a solution, in effect you are assuming that your prospects are already aware of the problems that your solution can solve for them. If your prospects are not able to relate your solution back to their own specific problems, your message will probably just “bounce off”.
If you use industry-specific jargon to describe your solution, you are making the additional assumption that your prospects are familiar with the jargon that you are using. If they aren’t, it further reduces your chances of attracting their attention!
How could this salesperson restructure his voice mail message to be more effective? Instead of talking about his solution, he could talk about one or more of the problems that can be solved by using a hosted Exchange service. A revised voice mail message might sound something like this:
“We help small companies look like big companies to their prospects and customers; plus, we help companies of all sizes focus more of their time and resources on their core businesses, which accelerates growth and profitability. If you’d like learn how we do this, please give me a call.”
This salesperson could further enhance his message by including a specific quantified impact that his company’s services have produced for customers. Here is what it might sound like if we add a quantified impact to the previously revised voice mail message:
“We help small companies look like big companies to their prospects and customers; plus, we help companies of all sizes focus more of their time and resources on their core businesses. This has helped some of our customers reduce their operating costs by as much as 30% in just six months. If you’d like learn how they were able to achieve these results, please give me a call.”
Do you see the difference between the revised messages and, “We are the leader in Microsoft hosted Exchange solutions; please visit our website”? Do you agree that the revised messages are likely to capture more prospects’ attention and produce more returned phone calls?
There are other advantages to focusing your prospecting messages on problems rather than solutions. If you talk about a solution, your message will have the most appeal for prospects that are already actively looking for that specific solution. But, do you think those (few) prospects are just sitting around waiting for you to call? Or, do you think they might be doing some proactive research? In fact, isn’t it possible they might already have some price quotes in hand? If they are that far along in the buying process, how does it impact your chances of winning their business? If you do manage to win their business, how profitable is it likely to be? Wouldn’t you agree that in this situation your solution is more likely to be perceived as a commodity, and the business is likely to go to a low bidder?
Contrast this scenario to a properly managed, problem-based prospecting approach. If you are successful in attracting a prospect’s interest by talking about the business problems that you can solve and the quantified impacts that your company has delivered to customers, the natural next step is to ask the prospect to identify which specific problems pertain to their business. Once the prospect prioritizes their problems, you can ask more questions to help them quantify the impact of these problems on their business. If the quantified impacts are substantial enough, it becomes quite easy to justify a very profitable price for your solution.
If you want to improve your prospecting effectiveness, stop leading with solutions in your prospecting calls and voice mail messages. Instead, lead with the problems you can help prospects solve, and (ideally) one or more of the quantified impacts your company has produced for customers. This type of problem-focused prospecting approach will attract the interest of a larger percentage of your prospects, produce higher close rates, and generate more profitable sales.
Copyright 2005-2008 — Alan Rigg
Sales performance expert Alan Rigg is the author of How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Sales Team Performance: A Step-by-Step Guide to Building and Managing Top-Performing Sales Teams, and the companion book, How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Selling: A Step-by-Step Guide to Achieving Top Sales Performance. His company, 80/20 Sales Performance, helps business owners, executives, and managers end the frustration of 80/20 sales team performance, where 20% of salespeople produce 80% of sales. For more information and more FREE sales and sales management tips, visit http://www.8020salesperformance.com
Sales Management – How to Get the "Sludge" Out of Your Company’s Sales Opportunity Pipeline – Part 2
Written by Alan Rigg
In Part 1 of this article we examined the first of two key reasons while sales opportunities stall: poor sales opportunity qualification. In this article we will examine the second key reason why sales opportunities stall: poor CRM system utilization/compliance.
What is it so hard to get salespeople to put data into CRM systems?
The short answer is there is a basic conflict between the amount of data entry required to fully populate CRM system records and the amount of interest most salespeople have in performing administrative tasks. Let’s look at this conflict in more detail.
What data elements are required to fully populate a CRM system record?
The answer to this question differs by company. However, some common data elements include:
- Company Name
- Division/Department Name
- Billing Address
- Shipping Address
- Contact Name
- Contact Title
- Office Phone Number
- Cell Phone Number
- Fax Number
- E-mail Address
- Website URL
This is just the basic data required to establish a record. There are also a whole host of data elements that must be entered for each sales opportunity line item. And, if the CRM system is used as a repository for notes related to prospect and customer conversations, a whole lot more typing will be required.
The bottom line is if salespeople are going to fully populate CRM records for each of their opportunities, prospects and customers, they will probably have to invest between 20 minutes and one hour PER DAY on this administrative activity.
Why is this a problem?
It is a problem because most salespeople have little interest in performing administrative activities!
I have personally assessed several thousand salespeople during the past five years. One of the characteristics measured by the specialized sales assessment tests I use is the salesperson’s interest in process, procedure, and administrative activities. Approximately 80% of the top sales performers I have assessed scored a 1 or 2 (on a scale of 1 to 10) for this characteristic. These low scores indicate that many top-performing salespeople have little interest in administrative activities. (If you have been managing salespeople for any length of time, I’m sure this information comes as no surprise to you!)
How do we solve this problem?
There are two solutions that I recommend:
1. Assign as much of the data entry as you can to administrative personnel
2. Switch your salespeople to a system that ONLY tracks data related to new business activity and the progress of each sales opportunity through the sales cycle. Let’s examine each of these solutions in some detail.
Solution #1: Re-assign data entry to administrative personnel
If you want to continue capturing all of the detail required by most CRM systems, assign as much of the data entry as you can to administrative personnel. A side benefit of this approach is administrative personnel are usually much less expensive than salespeople. (Wouldn’t you prefer to have your expensive salespeople focus as much as possible on the activities that only they can do?)
Salespeople can supply CRM data to administrative staff in a number of ways. Here are two examples:
- Salespeople can give business cards collected during cold calls and networking events to administrative personnel for data entry.
- Salespeople can give administrative personnel copies of written notes from sales calls or provide the information via voice mail.
If your salespeople are going to perform any data entry, focus it on data that will help you track your salespeople’s effectiveness at generating new business and moving opportunities through the sales cycle. Basically this involves tracking “first meetings” (discovery conversations) with new prospects and the progress of each sales opportunity through the sales cycle.
Solution #2: Switch to a different kind of system
The second option is switching your salespeople to a system that ONLY tracks data related to new business activity and the progress of each sales opportunity through the sales cycle. The best (and only) system I am aware of is called M-Power. (For more information visit www.asasales.com.) One HUGE benefit of this type of system is it only takes salespeople two to five minutes per day to perform necessary data entry.
Does this mean you should abandon your CRM system? That decision is entirely up to you. While there is certainly value in capturing historical data about your salespeople’s activities, what is absolutely critical is having a clear understanding of their new business generation activities and the status of each of their sales opportunities.
If you choose to use M-Power in combination with your existing CRM system, you may be able to share data between the systems and avoid duplicate data entry. M-Power is tightly integrated with salesforce.com, and it also has interfaces to other commonly-used CRM applications.
Regardless of the choice you make, remember that the key to improving CRM system utilization and compliance by your salespeople is minimizing the amount of administrative work they have to perform. Re-assign as much data entry as you can to (lower cost) administrative resources and focus your salespeople’s data entry on new business activity and sales opportunity status updates.
Conclusion
If you want to improve the quality of your company’s sales opportunity pipeline, focus your efforts on solving two key problems:
1. Poor sales opportunity qualification
2. Poor CRM system utilization/compliance
If you implement the suggestions made in this two-part article, you will enjoy:
- Greater sales forecast accuracy
- Fewer “stalled” opportunities
- A steady flow of NEW opportunities being added to your company’s pipeline
Sales performance expert Alan Rigg is the author of How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Sales Team Performance: A Step-by-Step Guide to Building and Managing Top-Performing Sales Teams, and the companion book, How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Selling: A Step-by-Step Guide to Achieving Top Sales Performance. His company, 80/20 Sales Performance, helps business owners, executives, and managers end the frustration of 80/20 sales team performance, where 20% of salespeople produce 80% of sales.
Sales Management – How to Get the "Sludge" Out of Your Company’s Sales Opportunity Pipeline – Part 1
Written by Alan Rigg
I speak with a lot of business owners, executives and sales managers who are frustrated with the poor quality of their company’s sales opportunity pipelines. They are frustrated because:
- They have difficulty forecasting sales with any accuracy.
- Many of the opportunities in their company’s sales opportunity pipelines have not seen any change in status for weeks.or months.
- Their salespeople don’t add enough NEW opportunities to the pipeline.
Do you share any of the above frustrations? If you do, read on. This article will shed light on key reasons behind the poor condition of your company’s sales opportunity pipeline and what you can do to fix it.
Why do so many sales opportunities stall?
For now, let’s define a stalled opportunity as an opportunity that hasn’t seen a change in status for a specific period of time. (You get to define the length of this time period.) If you want to apply a more demanding definition, you will find some useful suggestions in the article, ” Sales Process – We’re Only As Good As Our Next Step “.
There are many reasons why opportunities stall. Let’s look at two of the most important reasons:
Reason #1 – Poor Sales Opportunity Qualification
A sad fact of life is that many salespeople do a poor job of sales opportunity qualification. Why is this such a common problem? Basically it comes down to three factors: lack of training, lack of accountability, and lack of inspection. Let’s look at each factor separately.
1a. Lack of Training
What is your company’s definition for a fully qualified opportunity? Does the definition exist in writing? Are your salespeople trained to qualify opportunities in a specific way?
In my opinion, a sales opportunity has not been properly qualified unless the salesperson knows (at minimum) the answers to the following questions:
- What business problems does the prospect have that can be solved by one or more of your company’s products and services?
- How significant are these business problems? In other words, what impact do they have on the prospect, both professionally and personally?
- Can the prospect quantify the impact of the business problems? In other words, can they associate dollar amounts with the business problems?
- Is the prospect worthy of the investment required for your company to manage a sales cycle? In other words:
- Are they credit worthy?
- Do they have a budget to invest in solving their business problems?
- Are all key decision makers engaged in the decision process?
- Does the company take proposed investments out to bid? If they do, are they willing to give your company some advantage in the bid process as a reward for designing the solution to their problems?
- What is their time frame for implementing a proposed solution?
1b. Lack of Accountability
Accountability pertains to creating and communicating clear expectations for sales performance. If your company does not have clearly defined performance expectations for salespeople, or if those expectations have not been communicated to (and ingrained in) your salespeople, you are likely to be disappointed with the results they produce.
To determine whether your company is truly holding salespeople accountable, do your best to answer the following questions:
- What percentage of each salesperson’s sales leads will be generated by your company’s marketing and advertising efforts?
- What percentage of each salesperson’s sales leads are they expected to source for themselves?
- What are the primary prospecting methods that your salespeople are encouraged to use?
- How many discovery conversations” (first meetings, whether in person or on the telephone) should a salesperson book with new prospects each week or month?
- What percentage of a salesperson’s sales should come from new business?
- What percentage of a salesperson’s sales should come from repeat business?
- How long should the average sales cycle be for each of your company’s products and services?
- What percentage of their opportunities are your salespeople expected to close?
- At what point is an opportunity considered to be “in trouble” (which means it should immediately be brought to the attention of management)?
- Who decides whether an opportunity is “lost”?
- How are lost opportunities (and the reasons why they were lost) tracked?
1c. Lack of Inspection Sales
Sales opportunity inspection involves sitting down with salespeople on a regular basis (I recommend weekly ) to discuss the status of every opportunity in their pipelines. These discussions should have two goals:
- To determine whether each opportunity has been properly qualified.
- To determine whether each opportunity reflects an accurate status.
NOTE: Don’t worry – this is not as time-consuming as it might appear. Once you slog through the initial pipeline discussion and help the salesperson clear the “deadwood” from their pipeline, future discussions are much more streamlined.
How do you determine whether an opportunity has been properly qualified and reflects an accurate status? By asking questions! The sales manager should ask the salesperson the same questions that the salesperson should ask their prospects. If the salesperson does not know the answers to key questions, or if their answers lack key details, the salesperson should be assigned specific opportunity qualification tasks to complete prior to the next pipeline review meeting.
Sales opportunity inspection is truly a critical sales management activity. Why? Because companies waste incredible amounts of time, money and resources on opportunities that can’t or won’t close! The sooner these (poor quality) opportunities are identified and removed from the sales opportunity pipeline, the sooner your salespeople will have more time to invest in finding truly qualified opportunities!
To be continued.
In Part 2 of this article we will examine the second reason why sales opportunities stall: Poor CRM System Utilization/Compliance.
Copyright 2007 – Alan Rigg
Sales performance expert Alan Rigg is the author of How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Sales Team Performance: A Step-by-Step Guide to Building and Managing Top-Performing Sales Teams, and the companion book, How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Selling: A Step-by-Step Guide to Achieving Top Sales Performance. His company, 80/20 Sales Performance, helps business owners, executives, and managers end the frustration of 80/20 sales team performance, where 20% of salespeople produce 80% of sales.
Do you have trouble convincing prospects to make the time to speak with you? Is your sales opportunity pipeline full of stalled opportunities? Do you find it difficult to close sales?
Each of these challenges can result from a single flaw in the sales process — failure to engage your prospects’ emotions. Why is engaging your prospects’ emotions so critical to sales success? Let’s answer that question by looking at each challenge individually.
1. Difficulty Booking Appointments
Do you think your prospects sitting around thinking, “Gee, I hope some salespeople call me today?” Of course they aren’t! Your prospects are very busy people. They have a lot of work to do, they have personal issues to deal with, and they are constantly being bombarded by marketing messages, e-mails, phone calls, cell phone calls, etc.
How can you break through what your prospect is focused on when they pick up the phone and grab his or her attention? Will droning a bland overview of your company and its capabilities do it? Will rattling off a list of features and benefits do it? Or, do you think it might be more effective to use emotionally compelling words that help your prospect visualize painful problems and actually feel the pain in their guts?
NOTE: Direct marketing campaign analyses have repeatedly shown response rates to be higher for campaigns where advertisements focus on problems rather than solutions.
2. Stalled Opportunities
Do you know what the #1 issue is that causes sales opportunities to stall? Most opportunities are never qualified properly in the first place!
Most salespeople enjoy managing sales cycles more than they enjoy prospecting. If a prospect expresses even the slightest interest in a product or service, these salespeople are delighted to jump through any number of hoops to try to turn the “opportunities” into sales.
What’s the problem? The problem is there are only so many selling hours in each day. Plus, most companies have limited resources they can apply to supporting sales cycles. If a prospect does not have one or more truly compelling business problems, and key decision makers do not feel significant pain from those business problems, what are the chances they will decide to invest to solve the problems?
One of the most effective actions you can take to minimize stalled opportunities is to learn how to do an extraordinary job of opportunity qualification. How many business problems does each prospect have that you can help them solve? How compelling is each business problem? Do the key decision makers really care about the problems? Does the company have the financial wherewithal necessary to pay for solving the problems?
If you find that a prospect’s business problems are not very compelling, or you find they may have trouble financing a solution to their problems, don’t waste your time! Instead, apply your time to looking for better prospects! If you only invest time in serious prospects who are emotionally engaged in the sales process, you will minimize the number of stalled opportunities in your pipeline.
3. Opportunities That Don’t Close
If a prospect’s emotions are not invested in solving a problem, how likely is it that they will make solving that problem a priority?
Of course, if you do not also provide a sound financial justification to support a prospect’s buying decision, you may run into another problem. buyer’s remorse. Still, getting a prospect emotionally engaged is the critical first step in motivating them to take action.
Isn’t Engaging a Prospect’s Emotions Manipulative?
No, it isn’t. If you are going to be a true sales professional, you need to choose carefully where and how you invest your time. Who wins when you invest your time in prospects that don’t have the kinds of problems you can solve? No one! Who wins when you invest your time (and your company’s resources) in helping prospects solve problems that are so compelling that both the prospect’s company and your company are justified in investing time and resources to explore possible solutions? Everyone!
Conclusion
If you want to increase the number of appointments you book through your prospecting efforts, you need to come up with compelling answers to the following questions:
- What can I say to a prospect in 20-30 seconds that will engage his or her emotions?
- What are the most painful problems that I can help my prospects solve?
- How can I help my prospects relive the pain that is caused by these problems?
If you want to minimize the number of stalled opportunities in your sales opportunity pipeline and maximize your close rate, put extra focus on the quality of your sales opportunity qualification by answering the following questions:
- How many business problems can you help each prospect solve?
- How compelling is each business problem?
- Do the problems elicit emotional responses from your prospects?
Remember, engaging your prospects’ emotions is critical to the entire sales process, from sales prospecting through closing sales. Learn how to focus on engaging your prospects’ emotions, and watch your sales production soar!
Copyright 2006 — Alan Rigg
Sales performance expert Alan Rigg is the author of How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Sales Team Performance: A Step-by-Step Guide to Building and Managing Top-Performing Sales Teams, and the companion book, How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Selling: A Step-by-Step Guide to Achieving Top Sales Performance. His company, 80/20 Sales Performance, helps business owners, executives, and managers end the frustration of 80/20 sales team performance, where 20% of salespeople produce 80% of sales.
Sales Process – How to Win More Big-Dollar Sales Opportunities with Brand New Prospects
Do your company’s salespeople sometimes pursue large opportunities with brand new prospects? What is their success rate when pursuing these types of opportunities? Do they lose more often than they win?
There is a specific sales technique your salespeople can apply to increase their chances of winning when pursuing large opportunities with brand new prospects. This technique is called “the monkey’s paw.” The concept behind the monkey’s paw sales technique actually comes from the shipping industry.
Here is a brief history
When large ships pull into a dock, they need to be tied to the dock. But, the ropes (and sometimes chains) that are used to tie large ships to docks are very large in diameter and very heavy. There is no way for the ship’s crew to easily transfer these ropes to people on the dock. So, a long time ago a clever solution was devised.
Members of the ship’s crew tie small, skinny ropes to the end of the large ropes (or chains). There is a special knot at the end of each small rope with a lead weight inside. This knot is called a “monkey’s paw” because it looks (at least to some people) like a monkey’s paw.
Members of the ship’s crew can easily toss monkey’s paws (and the attached skinny ropes) to people on the dock. The people on the dock can use the small ropes to pull in the big ropes (or chains) and tie up the ship.
So, how does this relate to selling?
Let’s assume one of your company’s salespeople is pursuing a very large opportunity with a brand new prospect. The prospect has not bought anything previously from your company. What are the chances the prospect will “take the plunge” and award a significant piece of business to a vendor with whom they have never previously done business?
Now, let’s change the scenario. When your salesperson initially contacted the prospect, they uncovered the large opportunity. However, they also identified several small, “quick-close-and-deliver” opportunities. They managed to close one or more of these small opportunities, and the products or services were delivered to the prospect (now your company’s customer) prior to the buying decision being made for the large opportunity. How will this impact your company’s chances of winning the large opportunity?
The answer is your company’s chances of winning the large opportunity have dramatically improved because your company is no longer an unknown entity! Instead it is a vendor that has already delivered valuable products and/or services to the customer. This dramatically reduces the customer’s perceived risk in awarding a large piece of business to your company!
Give some thought to your company’s product and service portfolio
Which products and services can be sold and delivered relatively quickly, providing your company with a chance to demonstrate value to new customers? If your company’s portfolio does not include any “quick-close-and-deliver” products or services, brainstorm how you can add some of these types of products and services to the portfolio.
The value of converting prospects into customers as quickly as possible cannot be overstated, particularly when your salespeople are trying to make relatively large sales to companies that have not previously done business with your company!
Copyright 2008 – Alan Rigg
Sales performance expert Alan Rigg is the author of How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Sales Team Performance: A Step-by-Step Guide to Building and Managing Top-Performing Sales Teams, and the companion book, How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Selling: A Step-by-Step Guide to Achieving Top Sales Performance. His company, 80/20 Sales Performance, helps business owners, executives, and managers end the frustration of 80/20 sales team performance, where 20% of salespeople produce 80% of sales. For more information and more FREE sales and sales management tips, visit http://www.8020salesperformance.com.
Written by Alan Rigg
Neither you or your employer can make money unless a prospect says “yes”. However, getting prospects to say “no” can be equally critical to your success.
How is this possible? I’ll answer that question by asking two more questions:
- How many of the prospects in your sales opportunity pipeline say things like, “Let me think about it” and “Call me back in a couple of weeks to check in”?
- Do you really think these are truly SERIOUS prospects?
If you do, you are only kidding yourself!
There are many reasons why prospects may be reluctant to tell you “no”. Here are just a few of them:
- Many prospects are nice people that don’t like to disappoint others. They know telling you “no” will disappoint you. So, they avoid disappointing you by stringing you along. Eventually they ease themselves out of the situation by no longer returning your calls.
- Prospects may think they have the clout required to sell your product or service within their organizations, only to find out they don’t. It would be embarrassing for them to admit this to you. So, they string you along to “save face.”
- Prospects may find they are unable to come up with the funding required to pay for your product or service. Yet, they know you have invested a lot of time, energy, and resources in an effort to help them fix specific business problems. They think you may get mad if they tell you the truth. So, they tell you “maybe” or “let me think about it.”
- Prospects are afraid that telling you “no” may cause a confrontation or encourage you to “hard sell” them in a last-ditch effort to salvage the sale. So, they string you along to avoid getting into an uncomfortable situation.
Top salespeople know that time is a salesperson’s only inventory. If a prospect can’t or won’t buy, a top salesperson wants to know as quickly as possible! They would much rather prospect for new, truly qualified prospects than waste time on opportunities that will never close. So, they are sure to ask for the “no”.
So, how do you “get to NO”?
The first step in getting to “no” is explaining to your prospects right up front that “no” is a perfectly acceptable answer! The conversation you have with a prospect might sound something like this:
“Bob, as we explore the possibility of working together, we may decide there isn’t a fit between what your company needs and what I offer. If that happens, to avoid wasting each other’s time, are you comfortable telling me “no”?
Once a prospect agrees they are willing to tell you “no”, you have a powerful weapon you can use to jump-start stalled opportunities and minimize wasted time. How does this weapon work? Well, if you ever feel an opportunity may be stalling, or if a prospect has not returned your calls or e-mails for week or two, put your cards on the table by saying (or writing in an e-mail) something like this:
“Bob, the last time I heard from you was on (date). Is (product or service name) still on your radar screen? Remember, “No” is a perfectly acceptable answer! I don’t want to waste your time or mine, and I don’t want to be a pest. Please let me know whether I should continue calling you. Thank you!”
My experience has been that, if a prospect is serious about acquiring your product or service, they will ALWAYS respond to this kind of communication. If they don’t respond, it is a strong indicator they are not serious. You have little to lose by scratching these non-responsive prospects off your call list and removing them from your sales opportunity pipeline.
Conclusion
If you want to be a top-performing salesperson, you need to view your time as your most precious resource. After all, time is a salesperson’s only inventory. If you fritter away your time on prospects that can’t or won’t buy, how will you ever achieve your goals?
To earn the greatest return on your time investments, go for the “no”. Tell each prospect right up front that “no” is a perfectly acceptable answer. Then, if you ever suspect an opportunity is stalling, or if a prospect stops returning your calls, remind them that “no” IS an acceptable answer. Giving prospects permission to say “no” gives YOU permission to stop wasting your time!
If you stop investing your time in prospects that can’t or won’t buy and instead use that time to find and work with truly qualified prospects, you will be rewarded with a significant increase in sales!
©2006-2008 Alan Rigg
About the Author
Sales performance expert Alan Rigg is the author of How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Sales Team Performance: A Step-By-Step Guide to Building and Managing Top-Performing Sales Teams, and the companion book, How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Selling: A Step-By-Step Guide to Achieving Top Sales Performance. His 80/20 Selling System™ helps business owners, executives, and managers end the frustration of 80/20 sales team performance, where 20% of salespeople produce 80% of sales. For more information and more FREE sales and sales management tips, visit http://www.8020salesperformance.com.
Written by Alan Rigg
Talking about price is an important step in the sales opportunity qualification process. After all, if a prospect can’t afford your price, are they really a valid prospect? Do you really want to invest your valuable time trying to sell to them?
That said, it often does more harm than good to discuss price before you and the prospect have determined whether your product or service can provide value to the prospect. Just about any price sounds high when it is quoted “in a vacuum”. Yet, that very same price can sound very reasonable, or even cheap, when it is compared to the quantified impact of a prospect’s business problems.
What is a quantified impact? This concept requires a little explanation…
Just about every product or service can solve specific problems for your prospects. Your mission as a salesperson (and it is definitely to your benefit to choose to accept it) is to ask questions to determine whether a prospect has any of the problems that your products or services can solve.
Once you determine that a prospect has one or more of the business problems your products or services can solve, the next step is to ask questions to uncover how each problem impacts the prospect’s business. Then you should ask questions that encourage the prospect to quantify (associate dollars or percentages and time frames) with their business problems.
Here are several examples of quantified business impacts:
- Our top-performing salespeople produce $200,000 more net profit per year than our average-performing salespeople.
- (Problem) generates an extra million dollars in operating costs in a six month period.
- (Problem) increases our administrative expense by 22% per month.
Quantified impacts are an invaluable aid to closing sales
How? If the quantified impact of a business problem exceeds the investment required to fix the problem, a buying decision is easy to justify. The larger the difference between the quantified impact and the required investment, the easier it becomes to close the sale. If the quantified impact is a multiple of the required investment (for example, a quantified impact of millions of dollars versus a required investment of thousands of dollars), the buying decision becomes “a no-brainer”.
IMPORTANT NOTE: In order for a quantified impact to favorably impact the sales process, your prospect must be the source of the numbers. Why? In general, prospects don’t trust salespeople. Many have dealt with salespeople who were more interested in making sales than they were in providing value. Plus, prospects recognize that salespeople have a vested interest in building a convincing business case that can be used to support a buying decision. This causes prospects to discount any quantified impact information that salespeople provide. However, if the prospect is the source of the quantified impact information, they perceive it as unquestioned truth. This makes learning how to ask questions to quantify the impact of business problems a valuable skill indeed!
What do you do if a prospect asks for the price of your product or service before you have had a chance to uncover the quantified impacts of his or her business problems?
Depending upon where you are in the opportunity qualification process, you might respond in one of the following ways:
“(Prospect Name), I promise that I will provide complete pricing information before we finish our conversation today. However, at this point I don’t even know:
- Anything about your business. What does your company do?”
- Whether you have any of the kinds of problems we address. (Then ask a qualifying question that will help determine whether the prospect has one or more of the business problems that your products or services can solve.)”
- Whether it even makes sense for you to consider buying anything from us. (Then ask a question that will help the prospect quantify the impact of a specific business problem that has been identified.)”
In my experience, nine times out of ten the prospect will be willing to defer the pricing conversation. In the rare case where the prospect refuses to answer your question and continues to push for price, you might say something like:
“(Prospect Name), at this point we don’t have anything to compare the price with. My experience has been that a price quoted in a vacuum always sounds high. Would you agree?”
(Prospect responds.)
“If we can’t establish value, would any price convince you to buy?”
(Prospect responds.)
“Could we spend a little time trying to figure out whether (product or service name) will produce value for you?”
The prospect may not be willing to engage in a value discussion
This is especially likely if your product or service is seen as a commodity. If that is the case, you will need to decide whether you want to try to win the prospect’s business based upon price. However, remember that this situation is the exception. Nine times out of ten the prospect will be willing to defer the pricing conversation and answer your questions.
So remember, the key to successful price discussions with prospects is first determining whether your product or service can provide value to the prospect. This value creates a frame of reference against which price can be compared.
To determine value, ask questions to discover whether your prospects have any of the business problems your products or services can solve. Then, ask questions to identify how each business problem impacts the prospect’s business. Finally, ask more questions to quantify the impact of each business problem. The greater the quantified impact, the better your price will look in comparison, and the greater your chances will be of making a sale!
©2006-2008 Alan Rigg
About the Author
Sales performance expert Alan Rigg is the author of How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Sales Team Performance: A Step-By-Step Guide to Building and Managing Top-Performing Sales Teams, and the companion book, How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Selling: A Step-By-Step Guide to Achieving Top Sales Performance. His 80/20 Selling System™ helps business owners, executives, and managers end the frustration of 80/20 sales team performance, where 20% of salespeople produce 80% of sales. For more information and more FREE sales and sales management tips, visit http://www.8020salesperformance.com.
NOTE: You are welcome to reprint this article as long as it remains complete and unaltered (including the “About the Author” information at the end), and you send a copy of your reprint to alanrigg@8020sales.com.
Written by Alan Rigg
Maximizing account penetration is one of the most critical functions in sales. Why? The depth of account penetration has an enormous impact on revenues and profitability.
Think about it – if every one of your company’s salespeople sold every product and service in their portfolio to every business unit, department, and division of every account, what kind of number would they produce? Something huge, right?
From a sales management perspective, few things are more frustrating than having a bunch of “one trick ponies” on a sales team. These are salespeople that have developed a comfort level with one product or service, and that product or service makes up 80% to 100% of their sales.
I used to work for a computer distributor that had numerous salespeople that fit this mold. They would congratulate themselves for selling servers to an account, completely oblivious to the fact that the very same account was also buying storage, networking equipment, software, and professional services. The distributor’s salespeople only scratched the surface of the total available opportunity in most accounts.
Here is a second huge frustration for sales managers and executives – salespeople that don’t produce “traction” with new products and services.
When your company introduces a new product or service, you make a pretty sizeable investment to train your salespeople to sell the new product or service, right? Doesn’t it drive you crazy when only a fraction of your salespeople actually sell the new product or service? The return on your sales training investment stinks, and your company never sees the revenue boost it expected to receive from the new product or service.
Why do I bring up lack of account penetration and lack of sales traction for new products and services in the same article? Because the same problem is often at the root of both issues! That problem is an excessive focus on technical details.
Many managers and salespeople believe that salespeople need to become experts in order to sell a product or service effectively. To develop this understanding, companies invest enormous amounts of time and money in exhaustive training to educate salespeople on product features and benefits, performance characteristics, industry information, pricing guidelines, promotional activities, available collateral material, etc.
Unfortunately, when salespeople leave these training sessions, they often have no idea how to find or qualify opportunities for the product or service they were just “trained” to sell! This leaves the salespeople frustrated, as they feel the time spent in training was wasted. Management is equally frustrated with their sales team’s inability to gain traction with new products and services, and their inability to learn to sell their company’s entire portfolio of products and services.
This mutual frustration results from a lack of recognition of one very important fact:
When a salesperson identifies a qualified opportunity, there is usually no shortage of knowledgeable resources that can assist the salesperson with converting the opportunity into a sale!
These resources may include technical or other specialists from the salesperson’s own company, or similar resources that are employed by suppliers or channel partners.
If salespeople have access to product/service experts, why should they spend time learning technical details? Instead, why don’t they laser-focus their learning on how to find and qualify opportunities?
Your company can facilitate this kind of focused learning by redesigning product and service training curriculums to address the following topics:
- Product/Solution/Service Overview: What does the product or service do (in plain English)?
- Differentiation: What are a few key differences between this product or service and competitive products or services?
- Business Problems: What business problems does the product or service solve?
- Qualifying Questions: What questions should salespeople ask to determine whether a prospect or customer has the business problems that the product or service can solve, and to quantify the impact of these business problems?
- Expert Resources: What expert resources are available to help salespeople manage technical details?
If your salespeople have access to product/service experts, you can turn them into prospecting and qualifying machines by focusing your company’s product/service training curriculums on how to find and qualify opportunities. This strategy will help your organization maximize account penetration and jump-start sales for new products and services.
©2005-2008 Alan Rigg
About the Author
Sales performance expert Alan Rigg is the author of How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Sales Team Performance: A Step-By-Step Guide to Building and Managing Top-Performing Sales Teams, and the companion book, How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Selling: A Step-By-Step Guide to Achieving Top Sales Performance. His 80/20 Selling System™ helps business owners, executives, and managers end the frustration of 80/20 sales team performance, where 20% of salespeople produce 80% of sales. For more information and more FREE sales and sales management tips, visit http://www.8020salesperformance.com.
Written by Alan Rigg
Here are seven additional factors to consider as you define the parameters that produce success in your company’s sales job. If you are a salesperson, you can also benefit from considering these questions, as they can help you identify target prospects and further refine your sales approach.
9. Administration
- Which sales job functions require attention to detail? (Examples include making accurate forecasts, providing timely updates to the corporate CRM system, analyzing customer records to determine sales strategies, and ensuring regulatory compliance.)
Some companies have support personnel that perform administrative tasks on their salespeople’s behalf. Other companies expect their salespeople to deal with a certain amount of administration. If a tolerance for process, detail and administration is necessary for success in your company’s sales job, some amount of Tolerance for Administration is desirable in your salespeople.
10. Communication
- How important are verbal and written communication skills to sales success in your company?
- Are your salespeople required to make presentations?
- Are they required to compose letters or proposals?
Sales roles that rely heavily on high quality verbal and written communications require salespeople that have healthy doses of the attributes Communication Skills and Reasoning Ability.
11. Pre-Sales Support
- What support resources are available to help your salespeople manage specific steps of the sales cycle?
- How effective must your salespeople be when managing these resources?
The availability of support resources has a significant impact on the attributes required for sales success. If your salespeople have access to quality internal (employed by your company) or external (employed by suppliers or partners) technical resources, they don’t need to invest a lot of time learning technical details. This frees them to focus more time and energy on prospecting and opportunity qualification. By the same token, if your company employs technical writers who can assist salespeople with large proposals and bid responses, there may be less need for your salespeople to have strong Communication Skills.
12. Post-Sales Support
- Are your salespeople expected to provide technical or operational support to customers, or do other personnel provide this support?
If your salespeople are required to deliver post-sales support, it would be desirable for them to have a lower Sales Drive, be less Competitive, and have a higher Service Drive.
13. Training
- What kinds of training does your company provide to salespeople?
- How much training does your company provide?
Companies that provide a lot of training may have the luxury of being able to hire inexperienced sales candidates and “train them up from scratch”. This is extremely valuable in markets where highly qualified sales candidates are scarce and/or prohibitively expensive. However, if your company is going to employ this approach, you should seek candidates with strong Learning Rates.
14. Sales Manager’s Style
- What are your sales managers’ styles? Do they lean in the direction of being Field Generals (who prefer selling to coaching) or Administrators (who excel at mentoring and administrative duties)?
The desired levels of the attributes Sales Drive, Service Drive, Assertiveness, Competitiveness, Independence and Tolerance for Administration will differ based upon each sales manager’s style.
15. Career Path
- What is the career path for your sales position?
- From small ticket item sales to big ticket item sales?
- From sales to management?
If your sales team is a source of candidates for other positions in your company, you may want to consider whether your salespeople and sales candidates have the attributes required to be successful in those other positions. Why? Because the attributes required to succeed in those other positions may not be the same as the attributes required for sales success!
Consider this example: Most small ticket item sales cycles are shorter than big ticket item sales cycles. Per Question #7, the desired amount of Sales Drive differs based upon the frequency of opportunities for presentation and persuasion. A successful salesperson in small ticket item sales is likely to have a strong Sales Drive. Will they become frustrated by the reduction in opportunities to present and persuade that could result from a “promotion” to big ticket item sales?
Similarly, the attributes required to be an effective manager are often quite different from the attributes required to be an effective salesperson. Success in management can require more attention to detail and the willingness to delegate and mentor. These requirements impact the target ranges for the attributes of Sales Drive, Service Drive, Assertiveness, Competitiveness, Independence and Tolerance for Administration.
If you keep the fifteen questions discussed in this two-part article in mind, you will be able to more accurately define the parameters that will lead to success in YOUR company’s sales job(s).
©2005-2008 Alan Rigg
About the Author
Sales performance expert Alan Rigg is the author of How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Sales Team Performance: A Step-By-Step Guide to Building and Managing Top-Performing Sales Teams, and the companion book, How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Selling: A Step-By-Step Guide to Achieving Top Sales Performance. His 80/20 Selling System™ helps business owners, executives, and managers end the frustration of 80/20 sales team performance, where 20% of salespeople produce 80% of sales. For more information and more FREE sales and sales management tips, visit http://www.8020salesperformance.com.