Archive for the ‘42 Rules’ Category

Rule #12 – Be a Superstar

Thursday, May 16th, 2013

We all like winners and can appreciate superstars when we see them. We admire the superstar athlete who is talented beyond question and helps his team win games. But we’ve seen superstars come in a variety of packages. Some are boisterous and obnoxious to their teammates, fans and opponents. Others are quiet and gentle, shy and retiring, saving their talking for the gridiron or field of play. Others fall somewhere in between. In all cases there is physical skill, talent, discipline and mental toughness. There are similarities with the superstar salesperson, but with a few variations.

What makes a sales rep a star? Producing results and bringing in the numbers, of course. What do top producing reps, i.e., superstars, all have in common? The attributes and make-up of a Sales Superstar are like the balanced five points on a star:

Driver – a self-starter
The best salespeople are those who need no outside motivation. They possess an inner drive that pushes them to limits beyond the common individual. It’s not easily taught. A sales superstar is a natural self-starter.

Technician – technically self-sufficient
The ideal rep can demo the product themselves and only uses technical support for advanced situations or to show team depth. They are knowledgeable about their products and the customer’s environment and problems. They are not simply sellers. They are like good customer-facing mechanics that understand how the engine works. They don’t necessarily know how to build it, but can talk about its basic function and structure.

Facilitator – manages individual and group communications
A superstar rep is fairly adept in handling discussions one-on-one as well as in one-to-many communications. An excellent rep can command a boardroom full of customer and company representatives and facilitate the discussion appropriately with honed knowledge of customers, products, issues and solutions. It’s a skill that comes with experience, confidence and sensitivity—clearly possessed by a sales superstar.

Empathizer – can express identification with others
Another key trait of a superstar salesperson is the ability to identify with others and their issues and problems. They genuinely can respond naturally to the stated situation of prospects, customers and their own internal team. This characteristic stems from a sensitive heart and the ability to fully put themselves in the other person’s shoes and effectively listen with compassion and empathy.

Servant – a humble and healthy sense of self
Finally, an effective sales superstar is ultimately a server of others, like a servant with a heart, and cares for the other person before themselves. This characteristic really stems from their own security and strong sense of self. They are so comfortable with themselves that they don’t have to defend or fight, they actually can care for and desire to serve the other side.

As shown in the diagram below, the attributes and make-up are indeed like the balanced five points on a star. While these gifts and attributes may come naturally to some, they can be honed, developed and fine-tuned. But balance is the key. If any one point is extended or over-exaggerated then the star is off balance. An effective superstar is strong and equally weighted on all superstar points.

Are you a sales superstar?

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Rule #4 – It’s All About Your Customer

Monday, March 25th, 2013

(from 42 Rules to Increase Sales Effectiveness)
So if it’s not about you the salesperson, and it’s not about your products, then what is it all about? Well, who’s left? It’s all about your customer. In sales, the customer is number 1. The customer rules. The sun rises and sets with customers whose purchase of products pay the bills. This should come as no surprise. Then why do we sometimes forget our focus? Because, of course, it’s easy to default to focusing on ourselves and our products.

The best companies get this right. When I worked for IBM early in my career it was ingrained in all of us that the customer came first. IBM is a world-class services, engineering and manufacturing company. It’s a world-class sales, service and support organization. Across every plant and field branch office, make no mistake that all efforts evolved around ultimately satisfying customer wants and needs. From my perspective, at IBM, Sales is King, but the Customer is Number 1. All employees moved
toward the fulfillment of keeping customers coming in and staying in the fold and growing their relationship with Big Blue.

I’ve never forgotten how that priority permeated the culture of the organization. While there was a healthy respect for our own products, sales prowess and service reputation, there was an almost reverential feeling toward our existing customers and prospects. This carried over into how we as salespeople approached, serviced and sold to them. It wasn’t always perfect, but the culture drove the effort. Even our selling process (in the 1980s) carried the mantle Customer-Oriented Selling.

With the correct focus on the customer, the foundation for sales success and thus effectiveness is laid. If we respect our prospects and customers as people rather than as objects of attainment, then we approach, engage, discover, question, negotiate and close them with competent humanity. We do not badger, insult, barrage, belittle, disrespect, manipulate, or take advantage of those whom we, in essence, should seek to serve. I daresay that when we approach our prospects and customers with a servant’s heart, a workman’s ethic, a quality product at a fair and reasonable price, we become a force to be reckoned with in the marketplace.

I once joined a firm and took over a territory previously managed by a rep who was fired for forging customer signatures on two deals. On my second week on the job I had to go out and apologize to upset customers for these egregious acts by a representative of my company. On top of that, I found out that my firm already had a dubious reputation among some customers in my new territory. Without skipping a beat, I immediately went to work on my own systematic 90-day Customer Rejuvenation Program. I did not “approach and sell” during that period as much as simply “reach out and touch” my prospects and customers with a monthly personal campaign that included letters (this was pre-email), postcards and phone call messages. Every prioritized account (see Rule 19) was included in the campaign that was personally managed by me, not by Marketing. I had to control the turnaround effort and put a personal stake in the territory ground as the new sales guy in town. My mailings and messages were upbeat, positive and personal. I held my head high and did not issue blanket apologies for past poor service. I approached prospects and customers with the assumption that whatever concerns they had about the quality of our service and support, those days were past. A new day had come and it started with me and a professional and intelligent introduction to the new team.

By the end of my first full year in the territory I was the #1 sales revenue producer worldwide for the company. My customers loved me because I loved them first.

Do you put your customers first?

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Rule #3 – It’s Not About Your Product

Monday, March 11th, 2013

(from 42 Rules to Increase Sales Effectiveness)
The products sold in the marketplace, whether to businesses or consumers, are broad in scope, complexity and value. As salespeople we are selling commercial and consumer products both domestically and globally, including financial products, real estate, home and personal products, hardware and software solutions, consulting and professional services, to individuals and businesses large and small and ranging from tens to thousands to many millions of dollars in value. In our selling jobs, the products we sell are great, cool, fun, helpful, worthy, comprehensive, leading-edge, powerful and awesome. We spend many hours getting trained on them, learning their features and benefits and being able to articulate use-cases and even demonstrate them ourselves.

It’s very easy to become focused on the value of our products.

While we’ve learned in Rule 2 that “It’s not about you,” I can tell you with assurance that to be effective in sales, it’s also not about your products. You might be saying, “But my product really is helpful for businesses and streamlines operations while cutting costs, and it comes in blue.” This may all be true, but it’s really beside the point. This is one of the toughest lessons for us salespeople to learn.

Certainly we need to know and understand our products and services, as well as articulate the benefits and value they bring to our prospects and customers. But as we will discuss further in Rule 4, our customers have far deeper concerns that are either on the surface clear for all to see, or hidden or even stuffed beneath layers of covering.

Of course our products may help and come to the rescue, fixing issues of which our customers were perhaps not fully aware. Again, while not irrelevant, they are only props within a scene in a bigger play. Until we recognize that, we will consistently fall into a trap of focusing our conversations too much on our great products and services, to the detriment of fully providing problem-solving solutions to our customers.

Indeed, for many reps today, the strong tendency is to speak about their products too much and too soon.

Jerry, one of the better producing reps on an enterprise sales team, was technically adept and knowledgeable. He prided himself in quickly closing business and moving on to new opportunities. His numbers bore this out. He was one of the top reps in transaction quantity, if not in average deal size. In listening and following Jerry on sales calls, it was clear that Jerry knew his products well and got to them as subject matter quickly in his sales calls and conversations. The customers didn’t mind because the product was one that when demonstrated rated a high “wow factor” – that is, it quickly impressed and interested customers. Jerry was adept at following up with price quotes and moving the deal to closure.

This is all well and good except when one considers the opportunity lost in his hurry to close business and move on. When Jerry was taught to restrain from discussing and demonstrating the product too soon and spend appropriate time (note, not necessarily too much time, mind you, in his environment) exploring the application of his product to other departmental seats and broader implementation within the IT environment, he increased his average deal size by almost 25%.

Likewise, with those selling less complicated products, while our products are great, our focus still needs to be on the simple use or application of our product. The point is that the product is not the focus, rather it is the application of the product as it addresses the issues, needs and problems of the customer.

Do you speak about your products too much and too soon?

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Challenger Sales Superstars

Tuesday, December 11th, 2012

There is natural aligning of the 5 attributes of a Sales Superstar (see Rule #12) in my book 42 Rules to Increase Sales Effectiveness and the 5 sales rep types from The Challenger Sale.

1. Driver………………….1. Hard Worker
2. Technician…………….2. Lone Wolf
3. Facilitator……………..3. Challenger
4. Empathizer……………4. Relationship Builder
5. Servant………………..5. Reactive Problem Solver

While the Sales Executive Council research reveals the Challenger Rep is the top sales producing profile in a post-2008 world, the message should be to balance out and develop all 5 behavioral areas. Nothing wrong with being an Empathizer-Relationship Builder, as long as you develop other areas, particularly provocative Facilitator-Challenger skills and actions. There’s nothing like a capable Technician-Lone Wolf with a Servant-Problem Solving heart and honed people skills.

We all want to hire “the best” or be “top producers” – the real catch is the one who’s the “full package.” Bottom line: true superstar sales reps are balanced people. Great reps, sales superstars in my book, possess healthy doses of all 5 points on the star. The good news is that these are teachable; the challenge is that they be necessarily honed and developed in a changing world.

Are you a Challenger Sales Superstar?

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Rule 24: Master Your 30-60-90 Day Forecast

Monday, September 24th, 2012

There are two things I ask to look at first when I am brought in as a consultant for a sales organization. The first is the documentation of their sales process (recall from Rule 10 that only 1/3 of firms have this clearly articulated); the second is their sales forecast report, or more specifically, their 30-60-90 day forecast report.

These reports tell me everything. I can see how disciplined the sales and marketing teams are; how clear and knowledgeable the management is on their go-to-market strategies, and how tightly managed or not is the pipeline management and forecasting process.

The CEO of a Silicon Valley startup told me that he would potentially need my help if they missed their quarterly number. He showed me a forecast report that had 88 line items of opportunities that his VP of Sales said might happen, though he couldn’t say which ones. Only one deal was closed two months into the quarter. I got a call from the CEO in the first week of the next quarter. My first question was, “How many deals did you bring in last quarter?” He said, “Three deals, and one of them wasn’t even on the original forecast report!”

I spent the next 60 days working with the CEO, VP, and the Inside Sales and Outside Sales teams in reconstituting their pipeline management and forecasting system. I implemented a 30-60-90 Day Forecast Report that was extracted out of their CRM system, Salesforce.com. We enforced a mandatory updating of
the CRM by Friday noon each week. We reviewed the following report each week by rep at the Monday morning sales meeting, with each rep seeing each other’s report. This report has three important components:

• Sales Process - reinforced at the top of the report
• Forecast Items - those accounts/opportunities that are at Stage 3, 4 or 5
• Pipeline Items - those accounts/opportunities that are at Stage 1 or 2.

Whereas their previous method was capturing 88 potential deals in play, essentially any deal at any stage, we now enforced a discipline to only “Forecast” deals that had been given a customized demonstration (Stage 3), had received a proposal (Stage 4), or were in closure (Stage 5). In the next full quarter, that same sales team “forecasted” 21 deals and closed 18 of them, a company record. The following quarter they forecasted 25 and closed 19, which helped them secure another round of funding.

The 30-60-90 Day Forecast report is not magic, but it does produce results like a good sports coach produces a better team with discipline, rules and accountability. Where utilizing terms such as Pipeline, Forecast or Best Case and Commit, this report can be produced out of your CRM. Master the 30-60-90 Day Forecast for yourself or your team. Remember, it’s not just a report, it’s a process.

How’s your forecasting process?

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Rule 15: Measure Activity Metrics

Sunday, January 15th, 2012

When asked how many new prospecting calls the Inside Sales team made each day, the Director of Sales of a client firm proudly stated that every team on her sales team made 40 calls a day. When I asked her how she knew that, she stated confidently that “she hears them” as she sits in the bullpen with them. “They all know that 40 calls is the number of calls they need to make and that’s what they do.” Oh, really?

This is a common reaction to classic selling activities across organizations. Some manager at some point in the past has declared a number of, you name it, phone calls, demos, meetings, proposals, mailings, etc., etc., that the sales team is to make each hour, day, week, month, or quarter. That becomes the magic number or mantra for the sales organization for a range of time until someone comes along and changes it or challenges it. Many firms and reps don’t know just how valuable these metrics actually are, but often they become unrealistic, onerous, or useless hurdles at which the team winks or rolls their eyes.

I learned long ago that every business has key sales activity metrics, which once discovered can drive one to consistent excellence in sales performance or management of a team’s performance. In every sales territory I’ve managed I’ve sought to understand key selling activities, their appropriate dose, and their yield. I recommend setting up a 30-Day Activity Measurement Plan. There are three steps:

• Identify 4–6 Top Selling Activities—actions such as prospecting phone calls, customer meetings, conference calls, demonstrations, emails, proposals, etc. Determine no more than six (you don’t want to track too many or you’ll defeat the purpose here); no fewer than four. These are actions that you or management have deemed important in the selling process of your product or service.

• Assign a Relevant Point Value to Each Activity—for instance, outbound calls might count one point, a meeting might count four points, an outbound email two points, etc. The key is to have a scoring system that is simple and relevant for each of the 4–6 selling activities identified. Don’t over-engineer this; keep it simple and on the honor system if tracking a team.

• Track the Metrics—now track the metrics daily, weekly and quarterly for each of the selling activities. Look for the patterns, trends and ranges in the metrics. See the diagram below for a sample tracking sheet. After just three weeks of tracking you will see clear patterns and norms. Take these to heart as a realistic snapshot of your real activity.

Remember to keep this exercise simple. Don’t over analyze when you’re starting out. Get a foundational benchmark and work from there. There’s value in the truth. When we conducted an Activity Metric study
at that firm doing “40 calls daily” we found that the call volume ranged from 19 to 53 calls per day by the team. The top two reps were making 20 calls daily; the worst performers were making over 40. We captured what the successful reps were doing, replicated it and drove all reps to make at least 25 high quality calls per day.

How’s your activity tracking?

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