Selling Power Blog

Four Political Opportunities that Can Win You More Revenue

Today’s post is by Kevin Doddrell, vice president of Revenue Storm.

 

 

Top sellers understand almost instinctively how to leverage political opportunities to gain a competitive advantage with customers and prospects. Often, this starts with finding the right moment to gain a point of entry.

Let’s look at four political opportunities that can open the door to winning deals.

Opportunity #1: Newly Appointed Executives

When executives are newly appointed, they often extend job offers to people in their professional network within a month or two. This creates a mutual bond of loyalty, which results in a very high degree of mutual influence.

Aligning yourself with a newly appointed executive is an excellent way to not only support her in becoming successful, but it opens the doors to build relationships with the people brought into the organization, thereby broadening your scope of influence and knowledge in the organization. Follow this line of influence in your sales cycle and it will create a relationship competitive advantage!

Opportunity #2: Reorganizational Tension

Tension is created when an organizational restructure is about to take place. While many salespeople will say they have to wait until the restructuring is complete before they can sell anything, this is when “heat seekers” will strike and make a preemptive move to gain a political advantage. Look for the heat seeker and preempt your competitors!

Opportunity #3: Vacant Chair Competition

Whenever someone resigns or moves on from a role, a vacancy is created. As a result, political activity rises significantly as individuals jockey for selection. Often the race is on to implement new initiatives to impress the decision makers determining who fills the vacancy.

This is your opportunity to seek out potential candidates and appeal to their personal agenda by assisting them in creating a vision for their organization that demonstrates tangible value.

Opportunity #4: Honeymoon Period

Whenever an executive or leader is appointed to a new role, there is a “honeymoon” period during which he or she is allowed time to “settle in.” Years ago this used to be six months to a year. Now a new executive is expected to launch her first business improvement initiative within the first 90 days. They are keen for external thought leadership on the market and business environment and hungry for ideas on how to create a step change in the business…the ideal timing for new thinking from you!

The ability to research your clients’ political environment and develop a vision that links to a personal agenda created by one of the above situations is the key to successful execution and closing of deals. In fact, selling in a highly charged political environment (like the ones described above) can be one of the most exciting experiences on the planet. The more highly charged the political environment, the more emotions are in play. This leads to more active forces behind position taking and, ultimately, decision making. Too often sales professionals shy away from political upheaval when, in reality, they should charge in!

Peak Performance: How to Tap Your "Inner GPS" When You Make Decisions

Today’s post is by Jamie Crosbie, CEO and founder of ProActivate. Jamie is a certified peak performance mindset trainer. Contact her at jcrosbie@proactivate.net or (214) 720-9922 to learn more about how her training can help your sales team reach peak performance levels.  

 

Life is full of choices. Do you want Bavarian cream or jelly filling in your donut? Jalapenos on your pizza? Gluten free or whole grain? Should you invest in bonuses or add new training for your sales team?

On any given day, you can face a bewildering array of choices. Some choices are obviously weightier than others. How do you keep up with the changes, make educated guesses, and make meaningful, high-impact decisions on a daily basis?

To answer that, we need to talk about using your “inner GPS.”

Plotting Your Course by Freeing Up Your Mind (and Your Time)

Studies have shown that most people make as many as 100 decisions every day. Not only can this be mentally tiring; it can be time consuming, too. One of the best ways to cut down on the time of this cognitive expenditure is to simply make some decisions on a wholesale basis.

Take, for instance, routine decisions about what to wear, what to eat, or how to handle the weekly commute. Often, these can be simplified by making bulk decisions in advance. If that means wearing an iconic hoodie every day, that works (it does for Mark Zuckerberg, anyway). For the rest of us, it can simply mean you streamline routines and focus on the critical decisions instead. In a nutshell, decide in advance what you can focus on and what you can turn into a well-oiled routine, so your mind is free of clutter.

Choose Early

Once you make it to the office doors, you may find yourself so slammed by a virtual train of emails, phone calls, and meetings that – by the time lunch rolls around – your cognitive capital may be waning. That’s why you should make big decisions early in the morning while your mind is still fresh and capable of both intuitive leaps and mental gymnastics. The basic idea is to handle the bigger issues first, then move on to the less important matters as the day goes by.

Free Your Mind and the Rest Will Follow

Decision making is not for the faint of heart. In many cases, you may need to step back and do what your mom advised when you were a kid: “sleep on it.” According to a recent study by researchers at the Journal of Consumer Psychology, temporary distractions such as sleep, exercise, or meditation allow other portions of the brain to “wake up” and solve problems much more easily. Allowing yourself to ruminate on a decision and take a mental break (if possible) may allow you to sort through what is meaningful and what is not.

Seek Win-Wins Instead of Expediency

Other decision making tools include asking important questions, such as examining what is in line with your goals and values. One way to do this is to seek win-win solutions instead of the low-hanging fruit of expediency. Take the case of Fairphone, “a social enterprise that is building a movement for fairer electronics.” As a company, Fairphone operates on a platform of transparency: when choosing suppliers, they seek sustainability, honesty, and transparency over pure cost savings. Pricing is – of course – important, but, having said that, working to create win-wins with customers and suppliers not only creates better relations; it boosts profits, too.

This list is, by no means, exhaustive and each day will bring new challenges. If you can cut down on the number of decisions, allow your mind the freedom to think, and seek solutions that benefit customers and shareholders alike, you may find yourself less stressed and way more successful.

To learn more about developing a peak performance mindset, contact me today (214) 720-9922.

Four Selling Myths You Need to Know About

Today’s post is by Amy Franko, founder and president of Impact Instruction Group. Her first book, The Modern Seller, is due out in late 2017. Learn more and get free strategic selling resources at impactinstruction.com.

 

In today’s world of complex business opportunities, the days of the feature-benefit seller are over. What we need are modern sellers.

What are the some of the signs you’re a modern seller?  

• You’re recognized as a differentiator in your customer’s business.
• The value of the solutions you sell isn’t fully realized without you.
• Your customers see the work you do together as strategic to their competitive advantage.  

In the past several years, I’ve seen an industry in transition to this modern selling approach. It requires a shift in skills and mindset for sellers and their leaders. With that transition come some myths that need to be put to rest.

Let’s take a look at four of them.

Myth #1: The best sales pros solve defined problems.

Reality: Solving a defined problem is a transactional approach and makes you just like everyone else. In contrast, modern sellers find unidentified problems clients may not even know they are experiencing.

This type of selling requires you to listen intently and anticipate challenges several steps ahead. It also requires you to make connections in unique ways – by combining existing, new, and sometimes disparate ideas into viable solutions. In shedding light on an unidentified problem, your client is more likely to see you as the strategic partner to help them solve it. And that’s an important differentiator when buying decisions are made.

Myth #2: You have the same competitors as last year.

Reality: In sales, of course you need to know your current competitors. However, chances are that the biggest hurdle you’ll face is overcoming the status quo within the client organization. We see it when clients are inclined to resist change – to do things the way they’ve always done it. Those organizations will at best remain stagnant, or may even become extinct. Modern sellers facilitate forward momentum in organizations that are stuck – and don’t let their customers fall victim to the status quo.

Modern sellers also keep their eyes wide open across industries. There’s no longer an easily defined set of competitors. Fierce competition may come from organizations not previously on your radar, or even in your industry. Thanks to technology, barriers to entry are lower today. That opens doors to competitors you might not have realized were there, or competitors that didn’t exist before. Take a broader view of the landscape to uncover possible new competitors – and ways to outshine them.

Myth #3:  More is better.

Reality: We’re on information overload. According to a 2015 report, the average American makes or answers six phone calls per day, sends and receives 32 texts, and spends 14 minutes on chat/VoIP.  The result is a phenomenon called inattentional blindness – when it becomes impossible for someone to attend to all the stimuli in a situation. As a result, they may not see the opportunities right in front of them.

Modern sellers take the complex and make it simple. They don’t overwhelm their customers with extraneous information or lengthy presentations. They cut through the noise and communicate in a streamlined way, leading customers to simple and elegant solutions.

Myth #4: Savvy customers and prospects require less support.

Reality: Customers are savvier and armed with more research than ever before. It may be third-party research or internal business unit collaboration, and chances are good they’re doing it without you in the early stages. There’s a growing body of data on the buyer’s journey and just how much they’re doing on their own before connecting with a solution provider.

But all of this doesn’t mean they need less support. They need different support. The table stakes have changed, and modern sellers show up differently. Their role is elevated because every interaction now takes on greater importance. There are shorter windows of time to impact the situation and, as such, we may need to re-educate our customers or inspire them to see their challenges and opportunities in a new light.

The challenge is to take stock of our approach. Are we stuck in the myths? Or have we evolved into modern sellers and leaders? The modern selling approach will deliver better results to our organizations and our customers.  

How to Build Optimal Sales Territory Plans with CRM and Geo-Productivity Software

Today’s post is by John Stewart, CEO of MapAnything.

 

 

In my previous blog for Selling Power, I introduced a new category of sales technology called geo-productivity software (GPS). As a follow-up, I would like to outline how GPS can help you optimize your sales territory plan for greater results.

There are many ways sales and service territories are defined, including geography, industry, buyer profile, and product use case. Sales leaders know that focusing on the right accounts – and maximizing time with those accounts – is a key to success. Using CRM data in combination with data about the geographic location of customers, you can find the most promising regions and give sales reps the ability to focus on “hot spots” – or geographic areas with the most opportunity.  

Building a sales territory plan using CRM data is a known best practice. Defining territories with CRM and geographical information can be even more successful than using CRM data alone.

To define a high-performing territory, leverage CRM data about which opportunities are the most promising as well as geographical information about the location of those opportunities. GPS can show you concentrations of customers, opportunities, and leads.  

Using these two factors, you can define territories by both geography and opportunity value. In this way, you can tightly define territory boundaries based on probable performance.

In addition, your reps can focus on tighter geographic areas and reduce time driving between accounts, leaving more time for selling. The following method will help you define a productive territory structure for your business.

1. Define and quantify territory parameters with factors like geography, product use case, and buyer profile. Use CRM data to identify geographic areas with the greatest number of existing customers and greatest number of new customer leads that fit your product use case. Using specialized tools such as premium data sources and geo-productivity technology can help you identify targets and prioritize opportunities within a geography or territory. Use this data to find the potential territory value. Check the potential territory value against historical performance and active pipeline to define a territory that is optimized for success.
   
   
2. Assess the potential territory growth potential. You can define the opportunity within a territory as you calculate the delta between current pipeline and untouched net-new leads. Use a data source to identify and estimate the value of a geographic territory. Using geo-productivity software, you’ll be able to see a map-based visualization of current customers and these new opportunities. This assessment makes it easier to build a sales plan focused on prioritized opportunities with existing customers and new leads you have identified.
   
   
3. Normalize the value of the two revenue sources: existing customers and new leads. Run “what-if” scenarios based on existing customer data, pipeline, and new lead data. This is where the art of data-oriented territory management really shines. Based on business goals, you can define and shift territory boundaries to find the right balance of opportunities and maximize the likelihood of meeting the number.
   
   
4. Track results and monitor progress. With frequent updates, sales pipelines are more accurate and sales reps are focused on results rather than administration. Timely reporting within CRM lets you monitor progress through the quarter and make adjustments as necessary.
   
   
5. Optimize territory plans. Using CRM data and the location information of new leads and opportunities, you can change boundaries and territory plans to achieve greatest results. As territories evolve and gain maturity, CRM data about performance, sales cycle, and concentration of the greatest, most lucrative opportunities can help you constantly reassess territory plans and adjust boundaries for optimal results.

We believe that where customers and prospects are located is a key piece of information that has been overlooked by most sales organizations. As you add the “where” factor to your sales planning and execution, you’ll discover greater results and more efficient use of resources. Using geo-productivity software like MapAnything along with CRM, you’ll have the information you need to build a successful sales territory plan.

Surviving in a Sales 3.0 World: Why Insight, Not Instinct, Matters

Today's blog post is by Clive Armitage, CEO of Agent3. 

 

 

At the recent Sales 3.0 Conference, Selling Power’s Gerhard Gschwandtner argued that the inexorable rise of data and automated technology solutions poses threats to the sales profession. Specifically he said these advances could replace much of the selling function as we currently know it.

It’s a message that anyone involved in sales needs to listen to. Why? Quite simply, it’s because it comes from someone who has made a career out of being one of the thought leaders in the art of sales and who has consistently and correctly called what the future of sales will look like.

The problem, however, is that too many people in sales are not heeding the message. Instead, entrenched behavior remains stubbornly in place and, time and time again, I see sales teams and leaders repeating practices that are now outdated and increasingly ineffectual.

So, it’s time to move the needle. Afforded by the explosion in available data, there’s tremendous opportunity to manage data to better understand and engage with customers and prospects. However, this requires a change in working practices as well as mindset. (Watch my video interview with Gerhard Gschwandtner, below, to learn more.)

The sales and marketing people who embrace insight rather than instinct when developing selling strategies are the ones who are going to win, big time, in today’s increasingly competitive market. Businesses lose out on sales efficiency and effectiveness because they lack awareness of buyer behavior during the sales funnel, particularly at the early stage. By better understanding buyer behavior and intent at the critical consideration and research stage of the buying cycle, brands can more effectively create targeted sales and marketing campaigns that can accelerate the sales process.

Agent3 helps businesses generate a bigger and faster-to-close sales pipeline by delivering unique, actionable customer insight across the buying funnel – particularly at the early stages – through a unique account insights platform. We provide trusted, high-quality key and named account data on the global Forbes 2000 list of companies to allow our customers to build better sales and marketing strategies.

Our sales users tend to come from across the entire sales ecosystem and our typical user is driven by the desire to better understand who to engage, why to engage, and when to engage in their key and named accounts and prospects. We’ve just launched the next version of our Agent3 Platform and we have introduced something we call Insight Qualified Leads, or IQLs. We believe IQLs will become a stage in the sales and marketing process before MQLs and SQLs, where customers will start to understand where interest may be building within their key and named accounts – and Agent3 will provide the insight required to know who to contact, why, and when.

Sales and marketing executives face a stark choice: adapt or die. But the good news is that tools like the Agent3 platform are now coming onto the market to help the sales function deliver ever greater value to the business. By adopting new ways of working, embracing technology innovation, and taking a positive attitude to change, any sales or marketing executive can survive the shift that’s underway and become a winner in the new world of Sales 3.0.

If you’re based in the Bay Area and want to discuss some of the issues I’ve raised in this blog as well as share experiences with senior sales executives, please sign up to attend our executive roundtable on June 21 in San Francisco. Hosted by Agent3 and moderated by Gerhard Gschwandtner, the evening will explore best practices for creating a well-defined digital transformation strategy that accelerates changes to people, process, and technology for increased sales and marketing efficiency in the Sales 3.0 era.

How to Sell from a Position of Strength

Today’s post is by Scott Benedetti, VP of sales at The Pedowitz Group.

 

 

I rarely hear of salespeople being taught to think and act as if they are running their own business. They are not taught to be responsible for understanding and managing the “cost of sales” and to consider each transactional step in the selling process an equitable exchange of value in the progression toward a purchase decision.

From a pure selling process standpoint, salespeople complete an initial qualification call and speed off to supply answers to every idea or question the prospect brought up. They consume their own time and valuable company resources to perform the actions that answer prospect questions – thinking those responses alone will convince the prospect to buy.

They seldom do.  

The buying process is not linear – and it makes frequent stops along the way based upon the buyer’s needs, not the salesperson’s quota requirements that quarter. To move the prospect along in the process might require the sales rep to send a brochure, schedule a demo or additional discovery with sales engineering or executive resources, or book travel for onsite visits.  

If a sales rep believes he has qualified a lead, which he may in fact have, then he feels compelled to start spending time and money to answer the buyer’s questions. In today’s B2B committee-oriented buying world, the rep may be doing these activities for many influencers in the buying process. That’s a lot of time and resources being invested and probably wasted.

Usually these actions result in some delivery of a proposal or pricing and, sadly – more often than not – prospects go quiet. With an opportunity forecasted, the salesperson has no additional bullets to “sell with” and is relegated to call after call asking, “Ready to buy yet?”

Don’t Get Used

I speak from experience as I was fortunate, early in my sales career, to learn a lesson from having made the mistake of chasing a big deal, delivering on-site experts, providing multiple demonstrations, and coordinating our company experts’ responses to multiple technical inquiries. All my efforts resulted in an extremely high cost of sales and no deal. Of course, the deal was forecast and – as you might suspect – I pushed it out for several months only to learn, some months later, that the prospect had decided to do the project internally. Saying I was despondent would be putting it mildly.

Shortly after that opportunity died, a particularly astute manager taught me one of the most valuable qualification mnemonics I’ve learned: I.P.A. (Issues, Process, Answer). For every step in the selling process you need to understand the issues, then consider the subsequent steps in the buyer’s process BEFORE providing the answers (resources, demos, etc.).

It’s simple, he said: “These folks used you as their research gopher. Once you made the qualification assumption, you continued to provide a free education. You need to look at the mechanics of the sales and buying process and – at each significant milestone – make a business decision to go forward or not based on the exchange of value. To do that you should consider whether the process makes sense and moves you toward closing business before giving away the answers.”

Sell Like You Own the Business

Think like a business person: protect your time, resources, and selling spend. You only have so many bullets (answers) to leverage as a means of influencing the selling process. First confirm the issues and analyze the buyer process steps while withholding those answers. This will create the best opportunity to negotiate or influence the process steps into a fair and mutually beneficial exchange of value – and, ultimately, a purchase decision.

How to Leverage Your LinkedIn Connections for More Sales

Today’s post is by David Mattson, a best-selling author, sales and management thought leader, keynote speaker, and leader for sales training seminars around the world. As CEO and president of Sandler Training, Mattson oversees the corporate direction and strategy for the company’s global operations, including sales, marketing, consulting, alliances, and support. His key areas of focus are sales leadership, strategy, and client satisfaction.

No matter how advanced the communication technology gets, sales professionals are still going to need to reach out to new people. The trick is to pick the technology that makes that easy to do. These days, one of the best ways to warm up your cold calling is to use your LinkedIn network effectively. (By the way, if you’re not on LinkedIn, you should be.)

Let’s assume Juan Delgado is a first-degree contact of yours, and let’s assume you see that he’s directly connected on LinkedIn to Angela Yee, to whom you want to be connected. What do you do? You send Juan an email – preferably a LinkedIn message, since those are more likely to be opened and read. Your email says: “Hey there, Juan. I happened to notice on your LinkedIn profile that you’re connected to Angela Yee over at ABC Company. How well do you know her? Would you be willing to introduce me?”

In most cases, Juan will reply by saying something along these lines: “Sure, I know Angela. I’d be happy to introduce you.”

You then send a reply to Juan that says, “Juan, I got your message. Thank you so much for that. My experience is that an email introduction can work very well for everyone involved. I have attached a template for your review. Please feel free to edit it in any way you want.” The template you attach will briefly and plausibly introduce you as a potential resource for Angela, and then it suggests that Angela reach out to you.

Most of the time, Juan approves this template and he simply sends out your message, unedited, to Angela, copying you on the correspondence. Immediately thereafter, you email both Juan and Angela with this: “Hey, Juan. Thanks so much for the introduction. Angela, I’m really looking forward to speaking with you. I’m out of the office on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of this week, but I will be back in on Thursday. I will reach out to you by phone then. What’s the best number to use?”

You’ve just set up a phone appointment!

By the way: Don’t underestimate the importance of quickly moving this conversation from the realm of typed or texted characters into the realm of voice-to-voice or face-to-face communication, as outlined above. Why is this transition so important? Because prospects, by definition, are interested in finding a way to remove the pain they presently have. They are also concerned with finding a way to avoid pain they anticipate having in the future. These are emotional impulses! The intellect comes into play only when people want to justify a purchase. Here’s the challenge: If you don’t establish bonding and rapport throughout the sales discussion, and if you do not ensure that the prospect always feels OK enough to share his or her emotions with you, there’s no driving reason to buy!

This leads us to one of the major perils of attempting to conduct a discussion with a prospect without the benefit of verbal or body-language cues – via a series of email exchanges, say, that never turn into a real-time, one-on-one conversation. In these situations, you have no idea whether or not you’ve actually established bonding and rapport!

No matter how compelling the logic of the case you make via email, you will have a hard time figuring out whether you have tapped into the emotional currents that actually drive a sale. So do your best to move the conversation to a phone call, a video call, or a face-to-face meeting as early as possible in the relationship.

For more insights on the best ways to use LinkedIn to support your sales process, download the free book, LinkedIn the Sandler Way.

This post is excerpted from the book You Can’t Teach a Kid to Ride a Bike at a Seminar. Copyright © 2015 Sandler Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

The Biggest Trends in B2B Selling You Need To Know for 2017

Today’s post is by Sharon Gillenwater, founder and editor-in-chief of Boardroom Insiders, which maintains an extensive database of the most in-depth executive profiles on the market – from Fortune 500 companies to independent non-profits – to help sales and marketing professionals build deeper relationships and close more deals with clients. Gillenwater is a long-time marketing consultant with expertise in marketing strategy, account-based marketing, and CXO engagement programs.

 

What was once perceived as the simple task of convincing someone to buy something you’re selling has snowballed into a very complex , tech-driven process that few – including both the sellers and the buyers – completely understand. In the B2B world, there’s so much at stake that, according to CEB, there is added pressure on companies to seek more revenue from existing customers.

CEB has identified the following five sales trends for 2017.

Trend #1: Emphasis on cross-selling and account growth with current customers

According to CEB, the shift toward added services and digitization is increasing focus on recurring revenue streams – and the higher costs of new business acquisition are putting pressure on existing accounts to fuel growth.

Trend #2: More disciplined spending on sales enablement

Sales organizations have been bingeing on sales enablement tools, spending an average of $4,797 per quota-carrying rep annually. Is it helping? Not so much. These tools that are supposed to boost sales productivity, in fact, slow reps down by adding complexity. In a September 2016 report, CEB noted that 62 percent of seller burden can be attributed to overly complex internal processes and procedures that reps are asked to follow. And sellers are frustrated about being held back by their own sales organizations. In a survey of more than 2,000 reps across a range of industries and regions, sellers report that a full 20 percent of stalled and lost deals are the result of internal complexity.

Our belief is that technology-based sales tools can also create a false sense of security that you know more about your customer than you actually do. And it creates a false sense that you’re engaging with your customers, when you actually aren’t. You know all those automated, “personalized” emails that go out under your name? Many of your prospects are deleting them. So, maybe you aren’t connecting the way you think you are.

Beyond this ROI problem is something very fundamental. People buy from people. Tools can be a great aid but relationships matter, and keeping up with what is truly important to your customers is critical to growing these relationships. If you don’t do it your competitors will.

Trend #3: Customer centricity

This is something we’ve preached about a lot over the years – the fact that the sales process isn’t about you, but about the customer. CEB couches it in terms of improving the customer experience to make it as easy as possible for customers to buy your products, with a focus on the aspects of the purchasing process that customers struggle with even before they engage with a specific supplier: All these decisions we have to make! What do we need? How does it fit into our strategic plan? What’s the budget? Their point – and ours – is that sellers should work hard to understand a customer’s business goals and buying group dynamics.

Trend #4: The continuity of marketing across the sales funnel

According to CEB, progressive B2B marketing companies now manage a portfolio of marketing technology that deals with all aspects of the commercial process. They’re doubling efforts to develop customer buying journey maps to better support sellers with content and improve the customer purchase experience. And more firms are creating a sales development representative (SDR) role that reports directly to marketing to improve lead qualification and sales productivity. CEB believes we’ll see more organizations do this.

How could they improve on this alignment? We believe that one of the best ways marketing can support sales is to spoon feed them the kind of customer and CXO insight we are always talking about – and then create programs designed to reach and engage customers more meaningfully.

Trend #5: Simplification will be at the heart of sales strategy

The most successful commercial teams will be those able to simplify both internally and for their client. CEB warns sales teams not to assume that customers are automatically empowered with information and options. Like you, they are overloaded with them.

Our advice? Don’t you pile on, too. Keep it simple by doing your homework and then homing in only on the solutions that address their specific challenges. Stop trying to sell them stuff they don’t need. Be patient by building your own credibility over time. Then you can upsell. Learn what is most important to them, grow the relationship, and consistently make it about them.

It’s always a good feeling to see your advice and perspectives validated by another set of experts. The findings of CEB make it clear there’s no one-size-fits-all solution to sales – not even great technology. We’ve long been advocates of that perspective. If you’re going to achieve great things in 2017, you’ll have to get back to basics. Focus on your customer. Learn what drives them. Make it simple for them to make good decisions. Then repeat.