The Sales Wars

Before you work your next deal, watch this presentation on decision making.

Now pretend that this is how your prospect will decide, using the flow chart on slide #6, between you and your competitor.

In the sales process, which includes your phone conversations, emails, and presentations, did you provide them with the information relevant to your solution, in a manner that was easily understood and retained?

Think hard.

Harder than that.

Try this exercise, go to slide six and mimic that workflow process, but pretend you are a prospect considering purchasing a solution (the one that you sell).

Take notes.

Now look at your sales materials. How well do they align with your notes?

While maybe not this formal, every prospect has to go through some justification/rationalization process for making a purchasing decision. The vendor who makes this process the easiest, usually wins.

I just returned from a speaking gig at the University of Georgia (Go Dawgs!) and Im running behind on blog posts.   Hang with us.

In the meantime,  our friends over at slideshare.net gave me the privledge of writing a two part series on building effective sales presentations.  They just posted the first in the series.

You can find the post here -> Building Sales Presentations - Part 1

Thank You

I’ve checked, and its not a law or regulatory requirement, but for some reason the majority of sales presentations, especially from cross-vertical vendors, have a slide similar to the one above, usually within the first five minutes. (This is a mock up)

The question

“Does having a slide of nothing but client logos help you in a sales presentation?”

You can leave a comment, or email your reply to sales.wars@gmail.com

I read The Five Dysfunctions of a Team when it first came out a few years ago. At one point, I jumped up from my chair and starting yelling “That’s It!!! That’s It!!!!, “That’s why we are all ticked off and frustrated and want to kill each other right there!!!!!”. I highly recommend it.

I just found a short video by the author that you need to watch, but I have to share how I came across it.

Recently I was invited to join a new community at www.perficency.ning.com.

Ray Green from Perficency shares that “this community is for professionals interested in receiving and sharing progressive, thoughtful ideas around the topics of new business development, and personal / professional growth.”

Ray has been kind enough to extend an invitation to all TSW readers. This is free, so please join and be my friend. Right now, I have no friends, no close associates, no groups…….it’s 11th grade all over again.

So back to The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, if you join the community they have a short video by the author here. Take 3 minutes, watch it, and come back and tell us if he doesn’t describe at least two things going on within your team right now. it would be great if you leave a comment.

Take care.

A friend was doing some “spring cleaning” on his hard drive and came across a file related to an event that we had in common.

The event occurred when our SVP of Sales hired an outside marketing firm to run our lead generation, marketing, and PR campaigns. While I am sure the firm had it’s strengths, it lacked any talent or skill in the areas of lead generation, marketing, and PR.

Coincidently, the principles in the firm just happened to be neighbors and close personal friends of our SVP’s.

You know something is wrong when your marketing firm delivers you a press release that has to be re-written by your staff due to a significant lack of accuracy, relevance, and basic grammatical structure.

For lead generation, they had contracted with a telemarketing firm to execute a cold calling campaign across 5,000 prospects. Based on the quantity and quality of the leads we received, the qualification criteria they outlined for determining who was deemed a lead had to be something close to “must have a pulse”.

During our annual sales meeting, the marketing firm was invited to speak on their past accomplishments and future projects. However, our team took the opportunity to express our dissatisfaction in clear, unarguable terms by challenging every point. For example:

“We delivered 1,000 leads to you”

was met with the response

“No, you provided us with 50 leads, and 950 wasted meetings. Thanks.”

We’re we wrong to deliver our message in such a brute force manner? Having studied Jack Welch for years, I think not. However, our passionate view point may have inspired some of our team to move past the professional realm in communicating their dissatisfaction. “My retarded cousin writes better press releases” should have not been shared in this forum.

The pdf I received this week was a letter to our SVP penned by the President of the marketing firm, in which he expressed his shock and frustration at our response to their work. He explained that for our team to criticize his firm showed our ignorance for good marketing and that we should be replaced immediately. The letter continues with an explanation of why the only chance our company had to make the annual sales goal was to fire everyone and start over.

Then at the conclusion, there’s the obligatory “Here’s to a great year (after you fire everyone who knows my work is crap) and lets hope we get our golf handicaps down to 10.”

This letter was written on 1/1/97 (that’s 11 years for those too lazy for math). Through numerous job changes and PC upgrades, my former teammate has held on to to this as a momento of the time.

So why do I call this post “Lapses in Leadership”?

• Our SVP entrusted a personal friend to take over mission critical functions with no thought to the actual quality of the work delivered.

• When we spoke on an individual basis in expressing our concerns over the quality of the deliverables, we were ignored.

• Finally, our SVP shared the letter with us, thinking it would inspire and motivate. Yep, that didn’t work. While our SVP taught me, and a good many others, a great deal about being a sales professional, his legacy is closely aligned with this event.

Effective leadership occurs when your people want to follow you.

Want to share a lapse in leadership? Email us at sales.wars@gmail.com. No real names please.

“Ok, Don, you have $350k forecasted for this quarter with Citbank, where are we in the process?”

It was our weekly forecast call and Don had been batting a big fat zero for weeks. Naturally, he blamed his territory. We responded by sharing with him that having New York City by himself was a sweet gig and he needed to start taking advantage of the opportunity or move on.

So like magic, Don’s forecast goes from $0 to $500,000 in one week. Half million, just like that.

“Ok Don, who are you talking to and whats the process?”

“Well, I met this girl who works for the VP of IT. She’s going to arrange a dinner with me and her boss. I figure we’ll have a good meal, share a few drinks, and schedule a webex. I will show the VP a quick overview, and we should wrap this up by the end of the month.”

“The end of the month is in two weeks.”

“Right.”

“So you are telling me that a VP at a premier financial services company is going to spend $350,000 with a vendor based on one dinner and an online meeting?”

“That’s the plan.”

“And there are no formal requirements, no RFP, no evaluation team, and no evaluation process?”

“That’s why I can get it in so quickly.”

“Don, one of us on this call is stark raving stupid and fortunately its not me this time.”

Keys to Effective Forecasting

Weekly Forecast Reveiw

When digging a ditch, its almost impossible to tell if you are progressing in a straight line. Thats why its important to have someone on higher ground monitoring your progress and giving direction.

In an enterprise sales environment, even the best can overlook the fundamentals. The sales manager is responsible for identifying missing fundamentals and red flags that will delay or derail your deals.

Early in my sales career, I used to take any critique as a personal insult against my sales skills. If you are the sales manager you need to be aware of the fragility of the alpha-male ego, and treat accordingly.

Who makes it to your forecast, who doesn’t?

Your forecast is the justification for your existence, treat with care.

If there is an account that is repeatedly taken up your time, they belong on your forecast. If there is no good reason to put them on your forecast, stop wasting time on them. You can go broke being a free source of information.

The Evergreen Deals

I know the person that took my position with a former employer. There are three companies that were on my forecast 3 years ago, that still live on today.

If there are deals in your forecast that you know will never close, call your boss, explain the facts and then remove them. You will win far more brownie points than never closing a forecast of fictitious deals.

The Fundamentals

Here are the questions that a sales manager need to ask about every deal.

Who - Who will run evaluation, Who will fund with budget, Who will make the decision, Who will sign off?

What - What products and services are you pitching?

Why - Why are they looking? Why are they looking at us?

When - (Work Backwards) When do they want to be live? When do they want training? When do they want to make a vendor selection? When will they have their short list? When will they invite vendors for first round evaluations?

The “Gut” Explained

Ok so what percentage do you put on your deals? Try this:

25% - You are in the deal

50% - You are on the short list of three or less vendors

75% - You are selected, waiting for final executive sign off

90% - Paperwork complete, waiting on purchase order

100% - Paperwork received and processed by accounting

Any suggestion? Email us at sales.wars@gmail.com