Sales and Sales Management Blog

January 27, 2012

In 2012 the New Normal in Sales Is . . .

Filed under: career development,sales,Sales 2.0,selling,small business,technology — Paul McCord @ 2:20 pm
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As with the beginning of almost every year we have a number of commentators and pundits proclaiming what the “new normal” is.

We’re told that the old normal was the government strove to keep unemployment below 5% and that the “new normal” is going to be to try to keep unemployment below 7%.

We’re told that the old normal in the auto industry was to try to increase the miles per gallon on a manufacturer’s fleet by selling enough high mileage units to raise the fleet average, and the “new normal” is no longer trying to sell large numbers of high mileage internal combustion engines but to sell hybrids and alternative energy vehicles.

In sales we’re told that the old normal was cold calling, face-to-face meetings with prospects and clients, and using salespeople to find, connect with, and sell prospects, and the “new normal” is that salespeople are an outdated and costly luxury and are, at best, nothing more than an archaic relic of the past that companies just haven’t come to the realization are no longer needed.

Many, including myself, find it amusing to read the “new normal” predictions knowing that for the most part they are nothing more than someone’s attempt to be relevant and gain some attention.

We’ll ignore addressing the issue of the “new normal” unemployment rate and the “new normal” in the auto industry and spend a minute or two discussing the “new normal” silliness in sales.

The “new normal” argument is based on several supposed changes in how buyers buy products and services.

  • One argument is that the Internet has fundamentally changed the way people shop and buy.  Proponents of this position argue that the Internet provides buyers all the information about potential products and services that they used to have to rely on salespeople for, making the salesperson obsolete.  Further, most companies now offer their products and services online, so not only can the buyer get all the information and comparisons they need online, they can complete the purchase online, making a salesperson completely irrelevant.
  • Others argue that in today’s highly competitive market where any company that creates a competitive advantage through product improvement or a more efficient process that reduces price can count on that advantage lasting only a very short time before their competitors catch up and return the market to equilibrium, there’s really no such thing as a competitive advantage.  In such a market all products and services are reduced to commodity status where price is the only differentiator and once price is the one and only deciding factor, salespeople are an unjustified expense whose only significant contribution is to increase the product or service’s cost.
  • And others argue that with the increasing popularity of social media and technology the sellers that are left will never have to leave their homes as they will be able to connect with, develop relationships with, and sell via a combination of social media and tale-meeting technology such as Go to Meeting.  For these commentators the new normal is a world where technology replaces face-to-face meetings and even the telephone.  Sellers who use their car, their phone, or even text are not only behind the times, they’re signing their own death warrant by not learning to adapt to the new reality of business.

Have you heard these proclamations of the”new normal” before?  You probably heard them last year—and the year before that—and the year before that.  This new normal is taking forever to get here but I guess if someone keeps claiming this is the year, sooner or later maybe someone will be right.

But I sincerely doubt it—at least any time soon.

First, let’s look at a couple of statistics that might shed some light on what salespeople are doing.

According to travel statistics, business travel has increased by almost 4% each of the last two years.  I find it somewhat surprising that there’s a significant increase in business travel when supposedly salespeople aren’t traveling.

In addition, every single recruiter I’ve spoken to indicate a significant increase in open sales positions, especially for experienced outside salespeople.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not arguing that the sales profession isn’t changing nor am I arguing that social media and technology are not impacting how sellers sell.

My argument is simply that in 2012—and probably for the foreseeable future—there will not be a “new normal.”

  • Almost all sellers will find their offline activities will still be more vital to their success than their social media interaction.
  • Getting out of the office and in front of prospects and clients will still be the primary relationship building and selling format
  • More than likely business travel will increase again this year—and for the foreseeable years to come—including travel by sellers
  • Sales jobs will continue to be created with the corresponding opportunities for both experienced and inexperienced men and women
  • Social media will continue to be an area that sellers need to learn how to effectively engage—but the reality is it isn’t going to take the place of a seller’s offline activities such as cold calling, networking, and seeking high quality referrals and when a connection is made through social media, for it to be effective it will have to be taken offline.

In other words, for now and at least the next few years, the “new normal” will be the old normal.

Do those activities this year that have been successful for you in the past and you’ll be successful again this year.

It’s fun and exciting to talk about the “new normal,” but the fact is not much has really changed.

Human nature hasn’t changed since last year.

The phone still works and people still answer it.

Referrals will still get you more and better business than any other prospecting format.

You will still have to work to develop relationships.

You’ll still have to educate, be a real problem solver for your clients, and bring more value to the table than your competitors.

The world hasn’t shifted on its axis—yet anyway.

So take all the talk of the new normal with a grain of salt.  Don’t ignore social media and by all means use technology to the fullest, but if you want to be successful in 2012, pick up the phone, fill up the car, and hit the streets just like you did last year and the years before that.

Follow Paul on Twitter: @paul_mccord

May 3, 2011

The Civil War, General Patton, and Sales Technology

Filed under: sales,Sales 2.0,selling,technology — Paul McCord @ 9:35 am
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The United States is just launching a celebration of the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War, the bloodiest war in US history.  Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of reading about the war and talking to a few historians and I’ve begun noticing that the politicians and generals during the war faced a similar situation to what salespeople and sales leaders are facing today—how to adapt to the newly developed technology.

From April of 1861 until the end of the war in June of 1865, more than 600,000 and maybe as many as 700,000 Americans died of disease or were killed in battle. 

Battle casualty figures were staggering.  For the combined four years of the war, the two armies combined suffered a 25.1% casualty rate—a rate that no other war fought by Americans can even remotely begins to match.  For instance, the casualty rate suffered during World War I was 6.8% and during World War II 6.6%.  The casualty rate during the Vietnam conflict was only 0.5%.  Yet even during the two World Wars and Vietnam the casualty rates were considered horrendous and the folks on the home front were mortified with the casualties.

What can account for such grime casualty rates during the civil war? 

Technology.

Technology was outpacing the officer’s and politician’s understanding of how to use it.  The introduction of the riffled gun and cannon barrel and the minie ball changed all of the rules of war—but few understood that at the time.

The generals of the Civil War were taught tactics at West Point or at some other military school.  War wisdom at the time was to line up soldiers shoulder to shoulder with bayonets affixed.  One army was usually behind some type of fixed position—fence, stone wall, barricade or whatever, whiles the other army attacked in formation.  Most guns of the period held one shot.  Reloading took time and couldn’t be done on the run.  The advancing army held fire until they were upon the enemy and then fired and ran trying to breech the enemy line in close combat.  Bloody and gruesome, but it worked—until technological advancements turned the traditional attack into suicide. 

Once the North began acquiring the riffled gun and cannon, the men began falling like flies.  The old gun was accurate from a relatively short distance; the riffled gun and minie ball were accurate up to 250 yards.  In addition, as the war progressed more and more repeating rifles were introduced, giving the individual infantryman more firepower—accurate firepower—than anyone could have imagined just a few years before.  Most of these repeating rifles were in the hands of the Union army.

A further technological wonder that took both armies time to comprehend how to effectively use it was the railroad to transport men and material.

The failure of the officer corps of both armies to modify their tactics caused enormous casualties.  Technology had changed the nature of waging war in a very fundamental way.

Yet in the end, the war wasn’t won by technology.  When all was said and done, despite the great changes that had influenced the waging of the civil war—new guns, new cannon, iron ships, and even a submarine—the war was won the way all wars had been won, with the sacrifice of individual soldiers and superior generalship.

The Union had huge technological advantages as they possessed the vast majority of the new technology, yet barely won the war.  Despite their inferior numbers and equipment, the South outgeneraled the North time after time.  Not until Lincoln got a general willing to consistently take the fight to the enemy did the North begin to get a grip on the Confederate army.  And it wasn’t the technology that gave Grant the upper hand, it was his willingness to get down to basics and engage the enemy every chance he got and to exploit Confederate mistakes.

In the end, technology gave the North great advantages that helped them win, but as in past wars, ultimately it was the basics of good generalship and brave, committed men in the trenches that allowed the North to win.

Even today the basics of war outweigh the advances in technology.  General George Patton out witted and outgeneraled the German army even though Patton’s Sherman tanks were inferior to the German Panzer.  Guerrillas are able to defeat some of the most advanced military and security technology known to man by wit or luck or because their opposition relies too much on  technology and not enough on the proven basics of warfare.

We in sales are facing a very similar situation.  We have at our disposal a huge arsenal of new technology, yet surveys indicate that few really understand how to truly tap the potential of these assets.  In addition, there is a chorus encouraging sellers and sales leaders to not only embrace the technology but to virtually abandon the proven traditional basics of finding, connecting, and solving the issues of prospects.

By all means, embrace the technology that is giving us new opportunities to find and connect with prospects, to develop new solutions to their issues; to give a customer service experience superior to what was available in the past.

 But know that it will not only be sometime before there’s a full understanding of how to really use these assets, technology will always outpace our understanding of how to use it.  In other words, we’ll always be fumbling around trying to corral technology.

That being said, do not abandon the proven basics of selling because despite the hype, technology will never replace the personal relationship–it cannot replace the human connection and selling is at its core a very personal experience, not a mechanical one.

 If you want to turn your product or service into a commodity—bought like any other commodity primarily on price—then by all means abandon your traditional offline prospecting and relationship building activities.  But if you want to maintain profit margins and build a loyal client base, embrace technology as a servant of your primary selling activities rather than turning your traditional activities into a servant of technology.

Technology advances killed tens of thousands during the Civil War because it had outpaced the general’s ability to mesh their tactics with it.  How many sellers will it kill today the same way? Technology is great—and it will enhance the way you sell; but don’t allow it to replace the way you sell because in the end you’re selling to humans, not machines. 

November 19, 2010

Guest Article: “Giving Salespeople a Titanium Spine to Protect Margins and Grow Profits,” by Rafe VanDenBerg

Filed under: sales,Sales Management,selling,technology — Paul McCord @ 10:53 am
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Giving Salespeople a Titanium Spine to Protect Margins and Grow Profits
By Rafe VanDenBerg

Here’s a ‘fun’ after-lunch exercise: Grab your nearest salesperson and dissect them on the spot. What do you think you’ll find under that polished exterior? What lies beneath all that confidence, training, and customer knowledge?

Salespeople need to be able to close the deal by not giving up too much in price negotiations. During the economic downturn, heightened fears and concerns over losing the deal or alienating the customer dominated the pricing process.  When fear sneaks into a salesperson’s pricing decisions, the result is very predictable: Margin dollars are left on the table that simply can’t be afforded to slip away.

So how do B2B companies guard against these behaviors that can cause so much damage? How can salespeople ensure they are going far enough to win the business without causing unwarranted damage to the bottom-line?

The first step is to openly discuss the fear-factor. Pull sales teams together and discuss the reality of the situation. Role play and use real-world scenarios and company-specific examples to go beyond the conceptual so daily behaviors and actions are recognized.

The next step is to address the issues in a more consistent and scalable way through a systemic solution. Pricing data can separate the facts from the fears. And technology can certainly make that pricing data more accessible and actionable. However, not all uses of pricing data and technology in a B2B environment are created equal.

A common practice is having pricing analysts “slice-and-dice” pricing data to identify pricing problems. Unfortunately, most of the problems found are with deals that have already been negotiated. At this point, it is too late. Looking in the rearview mirror can only show margin dollars that have already passed by.

Other B2B companies will attempt to push pricing data out to the salespeople to conduct all the necessary “slicing-and-dicing” and “data-whipping” to arrive with a better pricing decision. All the while a nice theory, it is just not a very practical, or realistic. Salespeople need to be spending time selling, not dabbling at being a pricing analyst.

Other B2B companies will attempt to push pricing data out to the salespeople. Under this model, individual salespeople are expected to conduct all the necessary “slicing-and-dicing” and “data-whipping” to arrive at a better pricing decision. All the while a nice theory, it is just not very practical, nor realistic. Salespeople need to be spending time selling, not dabbling at being an amateur pricing analyst.

The reality is salespeople don’t need more data. They need answers – answers that will help win the business without giving up more margin dollars than necessary. Furthermore, salespeople need these answers when they are doing the deal, not after the fact.

Visionary B2B companies are embracing a technology called price optimization to maximize revenues, while protecting their margins. They are using this technology to automatically analyze every deal in real-time, pinpoint optimal price-points for every product on every order, and ultimately win the business without going any further than they have to. Simply put, price optimization analyzes and interprets all pricing data, and then feeds the resulting answers in real-time, as the deal is actually being negotiated. Companies leveraging this technology have been known to improve margin dollars 15 percent and more.

For example, one Fortune 500 industrial manufacturer has watched their operating margins grow by 12.8 percent in the past year. Another Global 1000 manufacturer produced gains that exceeded their initial expectations and goals by 400 percent – generating $40 million of incremental margin and being recognized as the company’s “most impactful growth initiative of the year.”

Recent reports by industry analysts are also now reinforcing the value of price optimization in tough economic conditions. AMR Research states that, “establishing fact-based pricing, improving margin realization, and rectifying unprofitable pricing practices can help companies continue to be profitable during a downturn.1”

Gartner, Inc. notes price optimization as “having a more-direct impact on revenues or margins than any other CRM technology through 2010,2” and clarifies in another report why it is so compelling: “The price optimization and management market differs from most other applications because it offers strategic benefits (helping organizations grow revenue and margins) and operational efficiencies (helping companies save time and cut costs). 3”

Price optimization technology gives salespeople a titanium spine in negotiations. For every quote they’re putting together or for every deal they’re negotiating, salespeople can finally know – with scientific precision – exactly how far is “far enough” in that specific situation. Price optimization may not make a B2B company recession-proof, but it certainly can be a very powerful tool for driving revenues without sacrificing vital margin dollars.

Rafe VanDenBerg is Vice President of Pricing Excellence and Strategic Marketing at Zilliant, Inc., the leading provider of price optimization software based in Austin, Texas.   

1 Pricing Optimization in a Down Economy: Mandate for Growth or Ill-Timed Choice, Noha Tohamy, April 2008

2 Gartner MarketScope for Price Optimization and Management Technology, 2008 Michael Dunne, March 2008

3Gartner, Hype Cycle for CRM Sales, 2008, Michael Dunne, June 2008

June 22, 2009

Boost Your Sales series: “Would You Hire an Administrative Assistant Who Can’t Use Word?” by Nigel Edelshain

Filed under: business,sales,Sales 2.0,selling,technology — Paul McCord @ 6:59 am
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Would You Hire an Administrative Assistant Who Can’t Use Word?
by Nigel Edelshain

Would you hire an administrative assistant who can NOT use Word – or a computer?

No chance, right? You’d think that was crazy most likely. But cast you mind back a decade, or two, and that was not a stretch. Remember when people sent inter-office memos typed on paper with a typewriter? A what? A typewriter.

Guess what? I believe sales people who cannot use social media and Web 2.0 tools in ten years from now will be of the same value as administrative assistants who can’t use Word today. Am I bonkers? Place your bets. Mine is placed.

If you’re reading this and you are a sales person, sales manager or CEO and you’re not informed about Sales 2.0 and how social media can be used in the sales process, get informed. If you don’t, I see your competition eating your lunch – and after your lunch your pipeline.

Sales 2.0 tools will be critical tools for sales people. Why? Because these tools make the inherently inefficient sales process that most companies use more efficient. They are game changers. Way beyond the impact of CRM.

How Broken is Cold Calling?

Let me talk to you about prospecting. Most companies fill their pipeline largely on cold calling and often on the worst kind of cold calling, which I call “smile and dial”. “Smile and dial” is all about volume.  Reps don’t prepare they just dial. Problem is we are all getting more and more screened – harder to reach.

It takes at least 10 dials to even speak to a prospect (I’ve heard of 20 plus dials in certain markets).  Then in the best case 1 in 10 people who connect to our “smile and dialers” will take a meeting (or whatever the next step is in our sales process). 

So here we are “smiling and dialing” 100, 200, 300 or 400 times to get one appointment.  Ouch! My dialing finger is hurting.

So this is state-of-the-art for sales is it?

What kind of production line is state-of-the-art where 399 widgets are defective and only 1 gets through? TQM anyone?

Eight Times More Effective

Good news. Great news actually. As social media and other smart Web 2.0 tools are being rolled out it turns out these tools can help address this lousy prospecting situation. Used correctly these tools can change the odds of getting that meeting and advancing the sales process by an order of magnitude (roughly EIGHT times on average in our testing so far – actually that’s conservative but if I say more you’ll certainly NOT believe me).

How come? That’s unbelievable isn’t it? Well on closer inspection not really.

What’s happened is our ability to get through to buyers has been degrading for several years, certainly post-Google. Buyers started placing less-and-less value on meeting with sales people who would just bring them product updates when they could get all that information online by typing just a few keywords into Google.

It took until about 3 years ago for tools to appear that were really designed to help sales people sell (and for us consultants to figure out how to use some of the social media already out there to help sales people sell). Given that sales people were at such a disadvantage by that time, it’s not that surprising that finally arming them with useful tools is making a big difference.

Ask Paul about Referral Selling

Consider just one key factor. The “big daddy” of all factors that dictates whether you will get into a buyer’s office: relationship. We humans have not changed there. We want to meet with people we know, like and trust. That’s what relationships do for us. And we’re OK if there’s a referral involved. If you tell me “Joe” is OK, then I’ll probably meet with “Joe”.

Guess what? There’s a fellow called Paul McCord who’s an expert on this is. It’s called referral selling.

Yes it is referral selling but it’s time to figure out how to do referral selling at Internet speed. The social networks out there allow you to do this kind of referral selling much (much) faster than you can by meeting with people. The tools expose the “social graph”. They show you who knows who. They set up relationship selling and allow you to start it from your desk.

Ask Paul about referral selling. Referral selling has always been an order of magnitude more effective than cold calling.  But now there are tools to help you do that much faster and more efficiently. Using these tools is called Sales 2.0.

What’s that on the Horizon?

The tide is changing and that wave coming in is called Sales 2.0. It may look small to you way out there on your horizon but its traveling fast now. You may want to get out there and meet it before it breaks on your shore. It could just be a Tsunami in the way we sell.

Nigel Edelshain is CEO of Sales 2.0 LLC. Companies that work with Sales 2.0 improve their sales results 2-3 times. They achieve these results by combining the use of Web 2.0 tools and social media with well-though-out sales processes.  Nigel has sold millions of dollars of IT solutions to major Fortune 500 firms. He was head of sales for the financial services vertical for Starpoint Solutions. While at Starpoint, he sold e-business projects to senior business and technology executives in Wall Street. Prior to Starpoint Nigel worked for Platinum Technology (now CA) selling IT professional services. Nigel graduated from Wharton’s MBA program in 1993 and has an undergraduate degree in Microelectronics from Edinburgh University.

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April 28, 2009

Twitter for Business—Why Is Everyone all Atwitter?

Filed under: marketing,prospecting,sales,technology — Paul McCord @ 8:15 am
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I’ve been using Twitter for a few weeks now and although I’m not a ‘pro’ at using the tool by any means, I’ve made some observations that have raised a number of questions about its usefulness and I’d really like to get other’s opinions and experiences before I determine that Twitter, like much of the other highly touted ‘social media,’ is a lot of hype and little practical application.

Here’s what I noticed about Twitter:

Preaching to the Choir:  I’ve spent a bit of time looking at the followers of a number of people who are obviously seeking to use Twitter as a marketing tool and I’ve noticed a pattern-the overwhelming majority, often in the area of 85 to 90% of the followers, are not prospects for the person’s company but are instead friends, competitors, or co-workers. 

The Numbers Don’t Add Up:  Assuming that their message is getting a broader play from being ‘retweeted,’ I chose three people and followed their followers to see how often a tweet would be disseminated through being retweeted.  The results, I’m sure, would be very disappointing to these three Twitter users if they knew the numbers.  Although they did have several of their tweets retweeted, most of the retweets were of tweets that promoted an article the person had read that had been written by someone else and was posted on the article author’s website or blog. 

One of the primary uses of tweets is to post things that are helpful to one’s followers and letting them know of a useful article is one of the most common forms of this.  The problem is if you’re trying to get yourself out to as many people as possible, being retweeted doesn’t seem to be doing a very good job-other than letting people know what you read and then sending them to that author’s site.   It appears being the author of the article is far more beneficial than being the tweeter of the article.

Inane Information:  The content of tweets is often ridiculous.  From ‘tips’ that are either so obvious or trite as to be silly, to the minutia of someone’s existence, the content often leaves one wondering whether or not the posters of these tweets really have a meaningful job-or are capable of meaningful thought.  Twitter sometimes borders on a 140 character version of the theater of the absurd.

Hyper Promotion: Some, by no means all–just the most obnoxious, use Twitter to shamelessly name drop, unrelentingly promote their newsletter or blog, continually proclaim their own guru status, or repeatedly tweet about their latest article.

Where most would post a tweet about their latest article or newsletter, these hyper self promoters will post the same tweet about their article or newsletter four, five, six times a day, day in and day out until they’ve written another article and then they start the cycle over again.  Where most will mention the new edition of their newsletter, hyper promoters will post tweet after tweet after tweet encouraging readers to go sign up for the newsletter, thinking, I guess, that if you didn’t do it the first 19 times they told you to, you’ll do it the 20th time they mention it.

Not only is this hyper self-promotion annoying, it makes the person doing it appears desperate.

Twitter appears to be a great way to maintain contact with family and friends.  If you want to create a casual network of co-workers and acquaintances-or even others within your industry-Twitter seems quite the tool. 

But for serious business promotion?  I’m far from convinced. 

To be fair, I’ve spoken to one gentleman who is a firm believer in using Twitter to promote his business.  He says that since he has been using twitter his website traffic has really increased.  Unfortunately, his sales haven’t, his newsletter subscribers haven’t increased that much, and his repeat traffic to his site hasn’t increased that much.  Has Twitter really helped him?  I don’t know, but he believes it has.

I have another friend who is certain that Twitter is helping him get the word out about himself.  He points to the fact that he has over 2,200 followers (he dismisses the fact he follows over 2,000 of them), and that he regularly has his tweets retweeted.  A cursor y look at his followers–it doesn’t appear that his message is getting out to many viable prospects. 

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I’m very skeptical of Twitter’s usefulness as a business tool, but I’d really like to get other’s experiences and opinions.  The floor’s yours.

April 6, 2009

Book Review: Digital Body Language, by Steven Woods

Filed under: Book Reviews,lead generation,marketing,technology — Paul McCord @ 9:38 am
Tags: ,

digital-body-language

Whether you are a salesperson or company, your prospects are changing.  Finding and connecting with prospects is more difficult today than ever before.  And once you do connect with a prospect, the chances are they know far more about the issues they want or need to address and the potential solutions to those issues than the prospects you’ve dealt with in the past.

It used to be salespeople were the dispensers of knowledge and solutions.  Not too long ago most prospects needed salespeople to help them analyze their needs and to then propose viable solutions to those needs.

No longer.

Everyday more and more of our prospects are turning to the ever growing number of resources on the internet to research their problems and issues, their wants and needs.  With the explosion of websites, article sites, blogs, forums, webinars, and other resources immediately available to anyone willing to take a few minutes to do a keyword search, salespeople are no longer the lynchpin of knowledge and solution.

Salespeople are increasingly engaging prospects at a later and later stage of the purchasing process—often so late in the process that their only task is to give a price since the prospect has already diagnosed the issue, researched the various solutions, determined the most appropriate solution for their situation, and now only need a potential product or service provider to quote a price.

This movement away from using salespeople early in their purchasing process creates a huge problem for companies and salespeople—how to recognize and capture a prospect early in their solution search.

Steven Woods in Digital Body Language: Deciphering Customer Intentions in an Online World (2009: New Year Publishing) argues that just as it used to be critical for a salesperson to be able to read a prospect’s body language in order to be able to successfully move them to make a positive decision to purchase, it is now equally critical—and possible—to read a prospect’s “digital” body language via their use and movements through the company’s internet resources.

Digital Body Language is aimed at the marketing function of companies with relatively sophisticated marketing departments engaged in business-to-business complex sales.  For Woods, the activities that allow one to read the body language of a company’s electronic visitor are very much a pre-sales handoff activity.  This, however, doesn’t mean that smaller companies, salespeople, and individual professionals can’t pick up some good ideas of how to understand where in the buying cycle the visitors to their website, blog, podcast, or other resource are.

Woods argues that by understanding and analyzing where the visitors to the company’s website or blog come from, how long they stay, what they engage while they are there, and what they go afterwards can help the marketing department formulate a campaign to eventually move the prospect from investigator who is researching issues and options to being handed off to the sales department for final follow-up and consummating the purchase. 

Each movement a prospect makes signals their individual involvement within the purchase, where in the process they are, what type of information the company can follow-up with that will interest them, and when to turn the lead over to sales. 

Reading digital body language requires a set of data mined from both your electronic and non-electronic resources, as well as “a marketing team prepared to implement numerous processes that deliver the right communication at the right time to the right prospect.”  No easy task and one that Woods says require “the entire organization to make significant changes to marketing.”  Traditional marketing concepts and functions still apply, Woods says, but now take a back seat to understanding and responding to prospect’s online behavior.

Digital Body Language is a thought provoking look at how prospects are buying in today’s market and how marketing—and ultimately sales—must respond.  As more prospects move to self-education, analysis, and solution creation, a new understanding of the prospect must emerge.  And since it seems that every day brings an additional resource that allows prospects more control over their purchases, those companies who learn how to “read” their prospects and engage them with the information they are seeking in a manner they will respond to will be the companies who manage to maintain their margins and grow their business—even in a market where more and more “complex” products and services are moving into the realm of commodities to be bought at the lowest possible price.

 

February 16, 2009

The Sales Value of Your Performance Management Process

Filed under: business,career development,crm,management,sales,Sales Management,selling,technology — Paul McCord @ 6:26 am
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Many sales people make the mistake of undervaluing their company’s performance management process as a tool to help them succeed.

We tend to measure our success in terms of sales volumes and reaching sales quotes. But sometimes, how we achieve these goals is as important as achieving them. That’s where your performance management process can help – by giving you vital feedback on your performance of fundamental competencies. Excelling at these the fundamental competencies will make all the difference in a tough economic environment.

Go back to your last performance appraisal and have a look at the feedback and ratings you got. Is there any room for improvement? Were you assigned any training or development activities as a result? Have you followed up on those? Has your performance improved? Any competency that didn’t get the highest rating is a target for improvement, even is your performance was deemed satisfactory. You want to be your best. Take the initiative to improve and use next year’s appraisal as way to measure progress.

Getting feedback from more than one person is also critical. Salespeople tend to work rather independently. Your manager might not be the best person to give you feedback. Multi-rater or 360 feedback will give you and your manager a much broader and fairer perspective on your performance. You should gather feedback from peers, other managers, administrative staff, anyone in the company that you interact with on a regular basis who can give you a knowledgeable assessment of your performance. Under certain circumstances, it might even be helpful to get feedback from customers – though you need to be careful with this. The point is to get the perspective of others and use it to develop.

Your performance management process can also be a wonderful way to help you stay focused and on track, but only if you use it as an ongoing tool, not a once a year event. Go back and look at your goals. Ideally, they should be aligned to higher-level organizational goals. How are you tracking to those goals? Often we set them in our once-a-year meeting with our manager, and then forget them or their specific detail because we file our appraisal away in a drawer. Keeping your “eyes on the prize” can actually help you to achieve your goals.

Making regular notes on your progress towards achieving those goals is also important. It can help you with regular status reporting, and makes it easier to draft a summary of accomplishments for next year’s evaluation – you’re less likely to forget important details. But keeping a performance journal also gives you and your manager a way to dialogue about ongoing performance and tackle any challenges before they become bigger issues. It’s just another simple way to identify opportunities for learning and development.

A lot of people fail to see the value in their performance management process because they’re stuck with an antiquated, paper-based process. And many sales people avoid using it as a tool to improve because they’re concerned about the use of their time. But today’s automated performance appraisal applications take the tedium and time out of the process and make it easier for everyone to extract value. Don’t overlook this valuable way to improve your sales effectiveness.

September 12, 2008

6 Great Free Sales Efficiency Tools

Filed under: Sales Resources,technology,time management — Paul McCord @ 9:08 am
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Here are 6 great tools that you should take a look at.  Some are necessities, some are just cool, some are both.  All are FREE.

Backpack: Backpack is a great free resource that allows you to organize your files, create a calendar, including reminders that will be emailed to you, set up files about anything, including upcoming meetings and events, schedule events, and much more.  The best part is not only can you access all of the features from any computer, but reminders for events, meetings and ‘to do’ items can be sent to your mobile phone as text messages.  In addition, you can share your information with colleagues, friends, clients, prospects, your manager, or anyone or any group you desire.

Remember Me:  Remember Me allows you to connect with prospects and clients via texting on your mobile phone.  You can send your business card, let the prospect browse your products and services, set up custom greetings, add you to their LinkedIn account, and more.  Not only that, your prospect can send their business card back to you which is automatically inserted into your CRM, Outlook, or address book.  Yep, it’s free.

FreeConferenceCall.com: Free Conference Call allows you to hook up to 96 participants on a conference call free.  Well, almost free-each participant has to pay long-distance charges by their service provider, but even that typically is only a couple of dollars at most.  You can record calls of up to six hours free of charge and then distribute those recordings via email, RSS, download as a WAV file, or access it through their recording call in line.  There is no limit on the number of conferences you have.  Have more than 96 participants?  No problem-but it isn’t free.  You can have up to 250 callers at a time using an 800 at a cost of 6 cents per minute per caller, or up to 200 callers on their standard call in line for $99 per month.

CutePDF: Everyone needs a PDF writer.  Some are expensive, some are free.  CutePDF is free and has some great features such as no watermarks and no pop-up ads.  A great basic PDF writer.  If you need a few more advanced features such as writing booklets, combining PDF files, and such, there is a PRO version for just $49.95.

Google Notebook:  Allows you to clip notes, images, links from the Internet and save them without leaving the site.  You can access them from any computer or your cell phone and send and share them with others.  You can have multiple files, share all or parts of them, save and store as much as you want and organize it any way you want.

Sticky Notes:  Now you can have sticky notes on your desktop.  Reminders, hot ideas, to do lists, or anything you want to remember can be posted in a sticky note to your desktop.  You can even print them or send them via email.  You can save them, hide them, show them, roll them, show only the heading, and lots more.  Get rid of all of these sticky notes on your desk and put them on your desktop.  Sure, you’re likely not remember them, but when you do need them, you’ll know where they are.

September 3, 2008

Are You Skeptical?

Filed under: business,Client Relationships,marketing,prospecting,selling,technology — Paul McCord @ 6:36 am
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I’m sure you’ve heard of social media. I’m sure you’ve heard what social media can do for your business. I’m sure you’ve heard that social media is going to change your life. I’m sure you’ve heard that if you’re not involved-if you haven’t embraced social media unquestioningly and with checkbook open, you’ll be left in the trash heap of business history. I’m sure you’ve noticed that all of these dire warnings about the hell you’ll be relegated to if you fail to give your life over to the empowering wonders of social media are coming from product developers, trainers, and consultants of-social media-that is, those with a very vested interest in its sweeping success.

Sorry, but I’m highly skeptical. Not of its value. Certainly I see value in some of it. Yet I see a lot of hype and useless techno gizmo flash in a great deal of it. In the end, I see value, not salvation. I see uses, not a revolution in how people connect and communicate. I see humans still being human-including that minority who find it safer connecting with a piece of technology than a real human, cloistered in their office or bedroom playing like they’re building a network of close associates when all they’re doing is avoiding that most frightening of all human activities-interacting with real, live, in-person humans.

As I said, I certainly see value. I see value in the ability to communicate instantaneously. Well, we had the ability to do that already, but social media allows us to mimic face to face interaction to some extent. I see the ability to find and create relationships with men and women we would not have had the opportunity to do so without the technology. I have friends and associates now that I would never had in the past. Some of these men and women live literally half way around the world from me. Some I’ve gotten to know very well. But the reality is that no matter how much time we spend communicating via email, on Skype, or through any other technological means, the relationship lacks the depth and dimensions that my one-on-one, physically in-person relationships have.

I have clients and prospects that are in countries that I know I’ll never visit. We interact, we communicate, we make real progress in changing their business. But these relationships lack the depth and dimension of those clients I deal with face-to-face.

Sure, social media gives us the opportunity to prospect in some new ways. It gives us the opportunity to find and meet people we’d never meet otherwise. It gives prospects, vendors, and the curious new ways to find us. It gives clients, competitors, and others new ways to praise us, recommend us, attack us. But it cannot give us a substitution for the experience of connecting with a human in a human way. It isn’t a substitute for living in the real world, with real world business and social relationships, with old fashioned marketing and prospecting, with a plane ticket in one hand and phone in the other. We’ll still have to have the soles of our shoes replaced, our hair combed, our suitcase packed, our car ready to go.

Few of the product developers, trainers, or consultants overtly claim that social media will replace these things. Most, if asked, will acknowledge they won’t. But when you listen to many of them, their message is something very different. I read one who claimed that if you’re not spending at least four hours a day working social media you’re doomed to fail in the coming business environment-and by the way, he’ll teach you how to do it for just a small fee of $3,500 a month.

I encourage my clients to engage social media but to reject the hype.

Some of the developers, consultants, and trainers of social media that I know think I’m doing a great disservice to my clients. Some have told me that I shouldn’t be allowed to misguide my clients in this way. I’ve been told by one that if I had any integrity I’d get out of the training industry since I don’t understand that the world has left me behind.

This in my opinion is nothing but the same hype, the same wishful thinking, the same hope that they’ve found the MECCA of business that preceded it with the telegraph, the telephone, the fax, the mobile phone, and every other advancement in technology. All of these changed business, it didn’t revolutionize it.

It’s the Jetson’s mentality where we’re all going to be flying instead of driving, pushing a button instead of vacuuming the floor ourselves, sitting behind a computer instead of engaging humans in human relationships.

Yes, I’m skeptical and I continue to encourage my clients to do the same. Engage the technology; reject the dreams. Use the technology; forget the message of business salvation. Find the technology that is really useful to you and don’t worry about each new toy, each new tweak, each new incarnation of the business messiah. Don’t worry about rushing to be the first to embrace a new twist-if it’s really that important, it will be there later-but if you get so caught up in the hype that you invest your life in it, will your business be there later?

August 21, 2008

Social Media–It Ain’t All Good

Filed under: business,Communication,Culture,technology — Paul McCord @ 7:21 am
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At times the praise of social media would make one think it equivalent to the Second Coming.  Although there are certainly many good things about the uses and potential uses of the various technology now available to businesspeople and businesses, I find that there is an element to social media that lends itself not to enhancing business and one’s ability to interact with others, but rather to coarsening business, leading users to communicate in ways that they would probably never–or maybe more correctly would never have done previous to social media–do in a traditional one-on-one format.

Although allowed in a number of places, the use of screen names instead of one’s name is most prevalent in community forums and allows people to comment without disclosing their real identity.  Inevitably, this ability to say what one wants without having to be responsible for the comment has lead to the breakdown in many cases of social norms and a very real coarsening of communication.

Up until recently, most of the coarsening of communication that I’ve noticed via the Internet has been somewhat limited-primarily to discussions of politics, religion, and other very personal areas.  That seems to be changing.

I’m beginning to see more and more personal attacks, vulgar language, and even veiled threats in business forums.  To date this coarsening in business communication seems to be relatively rare-but growing.  Even the Sales Sandbox on The Customer Collective in their tag line of “Learn*Share*Create*Play Nice” felt a need to ask users to be civil in their comments.

I suspect as more people encounter these instances of the breach of acceptable communication the practice will broaden and become more acceptable.  But as it becomes more acceptable on the net will that bleed over into our daily communication with one another?  To some extent it seems to have done so within other areas of discussion.

The available anonymity of social media is one of the major drawbacks of the technology.  If we could only eliminate screen names and communicate with one another once again as real humans!

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