Selling Power Blog

Using Your Intuition Is the Great Differentiator in Sales

Today’s guest post is by Rick Snyder, founder and CEO of Three Hats. For more information on building intuitive skills with your sales teams, contact him at [email protected] and stay tuned for his upcoming book, Decisive Intuition. Find more articles like this on Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook, and Instagram.

 

In business – no matter which product or service you sell – intuition is the great differentiator. Listening to and trusting your intuition in the sales process separates you from the pack, as most people are not listening to theirs. By listening to your intuition, you build more connection and trust – creating a win-win result with your prospect. Yet developing intuitive skills for sales is rarely talked about in training and mentoring.

The Key Ingredient

While sales metrics can be tracked better than ever, it’s the relationship with your buyer that will always be the key ingredient in winning sales. There is no cutting-edge CRM replacement for learning to listen to your intuitive nature and sensing what is happening in the relational space between you and the buyer. When you begin to tune into the signals and cues in your environment, you are learning to use your emotional intelligence to pick up on the social dynamics and body language your prospect is communicating.

The key to tapping into your intuition is slowing down.

Slowing Down

So often, salespeople get caught up in getting the buyer to cross the finish line – “the close.” The problem with this is that you are no longer in the present moment with the prospect; you are off into the future. Yet all the data you need to know is available in the present moment. Right now is where the sale happens.

For example, when you slow down, breathe, and take a pause from your script or what you think you should say next, what are you observing with the person in front of you? Hesitation? Do you pick up something in their body language? Are they excited and present with you? Are their eyes glazed over?

And what do you notice in your own experience? Are you bored? Feeling engaged and curious? Is your attention all on yourself and the facts about your product, or are you really focusing on them and what they are wanting and needing? Did you even take a moment to truly ask them this question about what they want and need?

Deepening Connection

Teaching your salespeople to slow down during the sales conversation allows their intuitive intelligence to catch up with them. When you slow down and get really present with the person in front of you, their whole story and their whole world open up for you. When you put full attention on what they are saying, what they are not saying, and how they are saying it, you open up your awareness to not just the content, but to the context of where they are coming from.

This is where you join them in what they truly want and need. This is where sales happen.

When you slow down, your intuition finds you. You are able to take in more information and access your subconscious, which is where intuition lives. From here, you might even be surprised at the level of detail you start to notice in the quality of the conversation – or something about the person in front of you that has you wanting to learn more. And this is where powerful, open-ended questions guide you and the prospect to discovering what they truly want and need.  

And, when a buyer feels like you actually are listening and that you actually care, the relationship builds.

To build a better connection with the person in front of you, practice listening to your intuition and instinct on what needs to be added to or excluded from the sales conversation. When you can slow down and become more aware of their reactions and responses – as well as your own – you are on your way to more authentic and powerful relating, which is the key to sales.

Sales Presentations Are Easy; Creating a Connection Is Hard

Today's post is by Amy Appleyard, vice president of sales for the Communications and Collaboration business unit at LogMeIn, Inc., a leading provider of cloud-based connectivity and one of the world's largest SaaS companies.

 

If you search “how to be a better presenter,” you’ll find pages and pages filled with articles, books, and recommendations on the topic. Presenting is a difficult skill to master as it not only involves public speaking (a common fear), but also, on some level, requires the presenter to sell.

When a presenter just talks through the benefits of what it being sold, however, the end result is a dry sales presentation that leads to a lack of engagement with the audience.

Why? No connection can be made when the conversation focuses squarely on the attributes of a product. Only by making a strong connection can the product be sold.

To get started, here are a few ways to create the often-elusive connection that is so essential for every successful sales presentation:

1. Turn on your video. People are constantly being sold to and bombarded with messages, resulting in shorter attention spans. According to The American Marketing Association, “Studies show that the average consumer is exposed to up to 10,000 brand messages a day.” In-person meetings have long been a chance to cut through the noise and create more personal (and less transactional) experiences; however, time and cost constraints require most meetings to be  conducted remotely. The good news? Thanks to technology, it’s easier than ever to build the level of rapport with prospects that was once possible only with in-person meetings. Although there will always be a place for in-person meetings, don’t be afraid to encourage your prospects to turn on their video cameras and utilize technology to create that “face-to-face” experience.
2. Stop talking about yourself. I don’t mean you should create a conversation that is void of any personal anecdotes. Showing a more personal side – whether by incorporating humor or recounting a personal experience – is important, but make sure you also take the time to understand what need the prospect is looking to fill so you can tailor your presentation accordingly. I also often coach people not only to tell personal stories, but to ask about the prospects’ business and challenges they are facing. It’s a great way to get to know a customer and understand if what you are selling will help them solve issues. A successful presentation is about telling a story where your prospect is front and center so you ultimately make them look like a hero to their boss. Who doesn’t like that?
3. It’s all about the follow-through. Like in golf and baseball, what you do after you hit the ball is just as important as what you do before. If you don’t follow through with your swing, the ball will always fall short. Taking a page out of the athlete’s playbook, what you do after your presentation is often just as important as the preparation and the actual presentation itself. This means having a recap, recording, and/or transcription of the conversation in order to follow through on promised action items and reference specific topics discussed.

At the end of the day, all successful presentations start with a connection between the presenter and the audience. Sparking those connections through technology and remembering what makes for an engaging presentation is key. That connection (or lack thereof) between you and your audience is often the difference between losing and closing a deal.

15 Common Sales Hiring Mistakes You Should Avoid

Today’s post is by Coreen Menezes, an avid writer who likes to explore new fields and research interesting subjects. She is a versatile content developer who plays with words to express her thoughts. “Calm,” “carefree,” and “creative” are the words that describe her the best. Currently, she is associated with Salesmate CRM as an experienced content crafter. Follow her on LinkedIn.

 

Sales professionals are critical for growing the revenue of a company, but hiring the wrong personnel can lead to financial losses. A recent CareerBuilder survey stated that companies lost an average of $14,900 on every bad hire in the previous year, and it’s a common mistake – nearly three in four employers (74 percent) say they’ve hired the wrong person for a position.

As a sales honcho, you need to be extra careful while on-boarding new sales personnel – as one rotten apple can spoil the whole barrel.

Beware! Wrong Hiring Decisions Can Jeopardize Your Sales

Knowing what’s going wrong is important to correct and move forward successfully. Here are 15 sales hiring mistakes that need your immediate attention.

Mistake #1: Ignoring the reference check
Every show has a backstage, and that’s also true of the show a candidate puts on during an interview. Never ignore references. Check them – most of the time, the interview persona differs from the work persona.

Fix: Track the employment history while screening sales candidates. Call and check about the candidate’s work history and performance with the references mentioned in the interview form.  

Mistake #2: Following your gut feeling
Letting your gut decide which candidate to hire becomes an expensive mistake for your organization.

Fix: Never hire based on your gut feeling. Look at the experience and expertise of the candidate. Define a set of hiring criteria and evaluate the applicant accordingly.

Mistake #3: Hiring too quickly
Hasty sales hiring decisions are dangerous; they reduce productivity and affect sales. Desperate hiring leads only to termination or resignation.

Fix: Take time, but hire the best: someone who can efficiently achieve sales goals. You must check if the candidate has the sales competency you are looking for.  

Mistake #4: Hiring a candidate because of an attractive CV

A well-written CV captures the attention; however, it may not be completely trustworthy. Most candidates hire professional help when creating their CV.

Fix: Ask the applicants to elaborate on what they have written in the CV. This helps you check their confidence and test their selling skills.

Mistake #5: Selecting a good speaker but a poor listener

A sales professional’s good speaking skills are always enthralling; however, that doesn’t mean they are good listeners.

Fix: Sales requires professionals who can listen first before speaking. While interacting with the candidates, check how attentive they are toward job-related information. Then ask them to explain why this position is suitable for them.

Mistake #6: Laying more emphasis on experience

Never focus on experience and ignore the candidate’s potential.

Fix: While hiring, don’t just look at the experience. Also look for traits such as confidence, patience, persistence, diligence, assertiveness, decisiveness, and willingness to learn and grow.

Mistake #7: Speaking too much

If the applicant uses the interview to get acquainted with your company, you end up doing all the talking – spending little time getting to know the candidate.

Fix: The candidate should research the company before coming for the interview. You just need to ask questions about your company and industry to check the candidate’s sincerity.

Mistake #8: Not getting a second opinion
You might miss out on few important points when you are the sole interviewer.

Fix: For taking the right sales hiring decision, involve higher authority or your teammates while evaluating the candidate. “During the interview process at Bay Dynamics, I make sure the candidate meets with a variety of my team members so they can offer their perspectives on whether or not the candidate is a good fit,” says Feris Rifai, CEO and co-founder of Bay Dynamics.

Mistake #9: Being unclear about the role
Finding the right talent is tricky if you are unaware of what you are looking for.

Fix: Set a benchmark for better assessment. Create a well-defined job description by explicitly stating the roles, responsibilities, and expectations from the sales professional.

Mistake #10: Hiring someone like you
Never get impressed by candidates because they have the same features as you.

Fix: Be more realistic to hire a proficient sales professional with unique ideas. “Asking if you would hire yourself is a great way of snapping out of it and questioning if you have set the bar unrealistically high. It’s a technique I’ve used myself as a hiring manager,” writes John Collins, director of content, Intercom, in his blog “Would you hire yourself?”

Mistake #11: Depending on first impression
The first impression can be misleading, as candidates have mastered the art of selling themselves in 30-minute interviews.

Fix: Don’t rush into a decision. Use social networking sites and background checks to collect more information about the potential candidate.

Mistake #12: Not hiring passionate candidates
While interviewing, you sometimes miss out on checking how passionate the candidate is.

Fix: Check if the candidate frequently switches jobs. Try to find out what kind of working environment the candidate is looking for and if he is passionate toward the role.

Mistake #13: Hiring a product sales rep to sell services
Selling denim is completely different from selling services, so don’t mix the two.

Fix: Search for candidates with relevant experience and expertise in selling services. Hiring a rep with experience in selling product is a bad choice for a service-based industry.

Mistake #14: Conducting a poor interview
Asking basic questions results in making a bad hire. According to the CareerBuilder survey, 75 percent of employers said they have hired the wrong person for a position.

Fix: Conduct mock sales calls to test the candidates’ convincing skills. Prepare a list of vital client-related questions for unveiling the true potential of the client.

Mistake #15: Avoiding repeat hiring errors
Repeatedly committing the same hiring mistakes instead of owning and fixing them results in mediocre teams (or worse).

Fix: Dig into your hiring process. Read various research studies and articles on sales hiring to understand what to do and what to avoid.

Find Your Sales Hiring Mistakes Sooner, Not Later

There is always space for improvement; it just requires a little effort and dedication. Sometimes we are not ready to own our mistakes, which leads to disastrous outcomes. So discover your hiring mistakes and try to avoid them in the future. This will help you build a strong sales team of excellent sales professionals.

How to Achieve an Immediate 33 Percent Boost in Sales Revenue

Today’s post is by Dave Kurlan – a 2012 inductee into the Sales & Marketing Hall of Fame, a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, and sales development expert. He is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group (named the Top Sales Assessment Tool for seven consecutive years) and Kurlan & Associates (a global sales consulting firm). He has written two books, including the bestseller Baseline Selling, and his blog, Understanding the Sales Force, was named the Top Sales & Marketing Blog for six consecutive years.

 

With so many options to improve sales, sometimes it’s difficult to determine what might make the biggest difference. A new CRM integration? A new sales process? A new sales methodology? Training on closing techniques? Coaching? A new lead generation initiative? Emphasis on social selling? More trade show participation? Hiring business development reps (BDRs) to set appointments?

While those are all important, a company shouldn’t choose one at the expense of the others. However, one thing from the list above that every company can do will increase sales by 33 percent!

Companies that require their sales managers to invest 50 percent of their time coaching can achieve this by making everyone just a little bit better. It doesn’t have to be heroic. You don’t need to transform Cs into Bs or Bs into As. If you can simply get everyone to become just 10 percent better, it will lead to an increase in revenue of 33 percent.

In the example below, I used a salesperson with a $100,000 monthly revenue target, a 20 percent closing ratio, and an average sale of $25,000. Each month, she must supplement her pipeline with 20 new opportunities worth $500,000 in order to meet her target based on those three KPIs ($100,000/20 percent/$25,000) as shown in the middle column. The right-hand column shows the effective change to her pipeline and results based on a minimal 10 percent improvement in each area.

Area	Current Requirement	With 10% Improvement
# of Opportunities	20	22
Average Sale	$25,000	$27,500
Pipeline Value	$500,000	$605,000 (22 x $27,500)
Closing Percentage	20%	22%
Monthly Revenue	$100,000	$133,000 (20% of $605,000)
Annual Revenue	$1,200,000	$1,600,000

That’s right – becoming just 10 percent better leads to two additional opportunities, worth an additional $2,500 each, adding $105,000 to the value of the pipeline. Become just 10 percent better at closing will lead to a $33,000 monthly increase in sales – for a total increase in annual revenue of $400,000, or 33 percent.

How effective must sales coaching be in order to make someone 10 percent better? Just doing the coaching – consistently, without fail – and working together with salespeople to help them reach their goals, will achieve that 10 percent.

If you add improved sales process and methodology, integrate those into a salesperson-friendly CRM application, increase the use of social selling, have BDRs book meetings from a lead generation initiative, and provide effective sales training to drive all of that, you’ll see your salespeople improve by more than 10 percent.

How to Sum Up Your Insight about Strategic Accounts

Today's post is by Ned Daubney, strategic customer advisor and founder at Last Mile Insight, which helps enterprise sales and marketing teams sell complex solutions to their most important customers by providing highly customized, deep-dive customer insight. Contact Ned at 508/965-9676 or [email protected].

 

Strategic customer acquisition programs often require a highly synchronized effort from enterprise sales, marketing, product leaders, and executives. Everyone needs to be on the same page to deeply understand the customer and the specific opportunities: messaging, positioning, and all engagement activity depends on a shared understanding of what’s in the customer decision-makers’ minds.  

The Last-mile Effort of Pre-sales Customer Analysis

That is a tall order. In essence, it’s packaging the mountain of available information into a concise, comprehensible summary that will unite your entire team toward a highly focused and effective sales campaign.

Among the many reasons to deeply understand these top customers is this biggie: to stand above competitors by equipping your sales teams to “teach, tailor, and take control” at customer engagements as promoted by the Challenger (and other) solution sales models.

So how does this get done? Who does it? And what insight makes the final cut into the final shared customer profile document?

You certainly can’t expect everyone involved in selling to read all the generic customer and market intelligence reports. There is a final step (which I call the “Last Mile”) in which someone needs to summarize and share all the known data and intelligence and connect it with your specific opportunities – adding conclusions, suggestions, and (most of all) insight.

Ideally, this should be done by a strategic market analyst working closely with the account rep. Analysts are often better at sharing this with the entire team. Some use an external consultant (shameless plug) to help out when needed and to train in-house analysts.  

This is definitely not a cut-and-paste exercise – it takes thoughtful analysis. Think of Cliff Notes. You shrink-wrap and repackage valuable information into useful insight.  

I have found what is most important in these customer profiles is the focus on what is going on inside the head the key C-suite executives – depending, of course, on what you are selling.  

Since my clients tend to sell primarily to CIOs, my profiles start with this person, but will certainly include insights about the CEO – because what the CEO sees as important will impact other C-suite mindsets.  

For example, a CEO under pressure from analysts or investors might publicly state her new policy demanding strict ROI measurements for all future projects and major purchases. Knowing this, you might suggest in your CIO profile that your team carefully prepare highly believable ROI statements and slides for your engagement. You would even more certainly want this if the CIO has a business background or an MBA.  

Profile reports often include multiple members of the decision-maker ecosystem.

Typical Customer Profile Report Content

Here is just some of the typical CxO / customer profile report content:

• “About (this company)”
• Their “marketplace”
• Their “business strategy”
• “How to approach this CxO”
• “Current initiatives”
• “Hot buttons and pain points”
• “Change drivers”
• “Strategic value” of your solutions to this target

Each of these topics requires a last-mile analysis of your intelligence mountain. Believe me, should you be lucky enough to have your CEO meet with the customer’s CEO, you will be very glad you did your last mile of homework.  

One last point I need to make – and this will make some of you uneasy. The general rule at many companies is that, since your top executives are busy, they require a one- or (at most) two-page document. Forget it. That won’t work here – break the rule. You can’t do this as a one-pager. But make your three- to six-page (or more) profile engaging. Write in human terms. Give your own suggestions and conclusions. Be provocative, if it fits. Use a (very) little humor where appropriate.  I’d rather hear, “Oops, I’m sorry; I should have read your whole document,” than, “You should have told me that,” from an executive.  

I’ve found that executives can read and internalize any document in a fraction of the time of most humans.  

Make them engage. Your executives don’t want to meet strangers – they want to meet someone they know (and can help exploit). They want to win as much as you do. And this is true for the rest of the team: the more they understand the customer and the intelligence-fed team strategy, the better they can each fulfill their role. 

For strategic accounts, the last-mile analysis is what demonstrates the value in all your customer and market intelligence investments. These investments have saved you days or even weeks of research time and effort, and are the key feedstock for your final, consumable customer report that puts everyone on the same winning page. So much depends on this last-mile effort.  

The One and Only Reason Your CRM Adoption Stinks

Today’s post is by Jason Jordan, a founding partner of Vantage Point Performance, a global sales management training and development firm focused on sales managers. Jason is a recognized thought leader in the domain of B2B sales and co-author of Cracking the Sales Management Code.

 

I’m Admittedly Numb

I’ve been around sales forces my entire career, and I must shamefully admit that certain complaints are so common they fail to concern me any longer. It’s not that the issues aren’t real, nor are they trivial – I’ve just become numb to them. It’s like the check engine light on the dashboard of a classic car I own.  The orange warning light used to command a lot of anxious attention until I realized there’s nothing I can do to keep it from returning. It’s just part of owning an old car – something will always be broken, and the orange light will always reappear. However, the car just keeps on running – check engine light and all.

That’s also how I feel about CRM adoption.

The Reason Is So Obvious

There are very few sales leaders I’ve encountered who didn’t complain about low CRM adoption.  It’s the orange warning light on the sales dashboard that commands the anxious attention of sales leadership, sales operations, and sales consultants. It’s always on and it’s seemingly impossible to extinguish. However, sales forces just keep on running.

I think this particular issue has lost my interest because the answer is so obvious to me. It’s not that leadership chose the wrong CRM platform or that sales operations didn’t commit to driving adoption.  It’s not that the implementation consultants did a poor job or that the salespeople were resistant. Well, those all could be contributing factors, but they’re not the obvious reason your sellers ignore CRM.

Your salespeople ignore your CRM tool for only one reason…Because they can.

When you read that statement, you might interpret it to mean you’re not being aggressive enough in your enforcement of CRM usage – that you need to make your sellers use CRM. That’s not what I mean at all. Decades of experience has shown there’s neither a carrot nor a stick big enough to drive universal CRM adoption. You truly cannot motivate all your salespeople to use CRM.

What I mean by that statement is much more literal…Salespeople are able to do their jobs without using CRM. So, they do.  

I’d be willing to bet you don’t struggle with e-mail adoption in your sales force – every person uses it. I’d further wager that mobile phone adoption is 100 percent, without any carrot or stick being offered. In fact, if your company refused to pay for e-mail or mobile phones in your sales force, your salespeople would probably pay out of their own pockets to subscribe to those services, because they need e-mail and mobile phones to do their jobs. 100 percent utilization, 0 percent enforcement.

But what about CRM? How is it possible that your salespeople – perhaps even your best salespeople – can do their jobs without CRM? Why is it so easily avoidable?  

The History and Future of CRM

In the answers to those questions lie the reality of CRM. CRM has historically been deployed as a reporting tool for sales management. Management can’t to its job without the reports CRM generates, but salespeople can surely do theirs. A salesperson’s job is to identify an opportunity, pursue that opportunity, and win the deal. In most sales forces, a salesperson can do those tasks without inputting data to a CRM screen. So, they do. And this brings us to the only viable answer to this decades-old issue of low CRM adoption:

You must make CRM indispensable to your sellers.

CRM needs to become so inextricably intertwined with your team’s activities that salespeople cannot possibly do their jobs without it. It needs to become like e-mail and mobile phones – a tool that actively facilitates the core tasks of identifying, pursuing, and winning deals. Rather than CRM being the orange warning light that flashes while the car keeps running, it needs to be the engine of the sales force without which no road can be traveled.

But with this insight comes a great challenge for sales leadership, operations, and consultants. CRM has to be designed from the ground up, not the top down. The first goal of every CRM design team should be to understand the natural selling motions of their salespeople and build CRM around them. Then CRM will become, foremost, an enabler of those activities and necessarily unavoidable. Salespeople will use CRM because it’s just a part of what they do – like sending e-mails and dialing phone numbers.

The added benefit of such an approach is that management’s reports then become an artifact of CRM’s true purpose – to make the salespeople better at selling. And the reports become more meaningful, since the system will capture the value-added activities that determine success or failure in the field. Ironically, building CRM primarily for the sellers will make it more powerful for sales management.

So, if I meet you at a conference, feel free to complain to me about your sales force’s woeful CRM adoption. Just be aware that my attention might be elsewhere…Like trying to decide where I’ll be driving my classic car the following weekend. Check engine light and all.

CIOs Sound Off about How Salespeople Can Measure Up

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.

 

Most tech vendors say they want to be seen as trusted partners, not faceless product pushers. And many of their ultimate customers (CIOs) also say they are looking for more from their vendors than transactional relationships. They want and expect more.

If both sides want the same thing, why aren’t they getting it?

Let’s look at this from the customer’s perspective.

Apparently, most CIOs don’t think their vendors are up to the task. According to a recent joint CEC/IDC study, only one in 10 IT leaders feel “highly satisfied” with the performance of their most strategic vendors, CIOs reported. And, they added, only 46 percent of these buyers feel their most strategic vendor partners regularly demonstrate roadmap alignment.

Do Your Homework and Connect the Dots

Anecdotes from real CIOs – such as this article published in CIO late last year – reveal CIOs’ frustrations with vendors who are unwilling or unable to connect the dots between their “widgets” and their customers’ business.

Andrew Santacroce, VP of Technology Development at TMNA Services, told CIO, “CIOs more often need a ‘partner’ who understands that widget’s role in customer success.”

Chuck Scharnagle – CIO of the Mohegan Tribe of Indians of Connecticut – echoed this thought, saying, “I need someone who really wants to understand what we need to be successful.”

So, how can you show your customers you understand what they need to be successful?

Recommendation 1: Do your homework. Find out what their priorities are and look for a “hook” that connects right back to your offering. When you communicate with them, talk directly about how your offering can help them achieve their goals. This will help you get your foot in the door, establish your credibility, and build a foundation on which you can start to build a long-term, trusted relationship.

Be Patient and Build Trust over Time

“The best CIOs buy based on relationships and trust,” Santacroce told CIO. “[In] today’s world, there are likely multiple solutions to choose. With trust, built over time, and a strong relationship poised to last well beyond the current opportunity, pricing will get sorted and a mutually beneficial deal will be inked.”

Joel Jacobs, Mitre Corp.’s VP, CIO, and CSO, would likely agree. He told CIO in 2018 that, because his vendors know Mitre Corp.’s business and environment, there’s a level of trust and collaboration that’s hugely beneficial. He says his trusted vendors can easily adapt to changing conditions, are willing to jump in and help in a crisis, and can participate in an open and direct dialogue on performance and their product/service plans.

EURPAC Service, Inc., CIO Mike Skinner also shared his wish list for vendors with CIO. “First, is the vendor willing to take the time to learn about our business and our value proposition? Second, will the vendor support us on good days and bad? Will they be there when we need them most? And third, are our strategies aligned? Are we likely to grow in directions that create synergy or separation?”

Most vendors would view this as a dream relationship come true because, if you talk with them, they are weary of competing on price alone and having their products commoditized. Again, it seems as if vendors and CIOs want the same things.

Recommendation 2: These relationships don’t happen overnight. And they don’t happen with every single customer, either. Identify the customers with the most potential and willingness to forge partnerships and put extra effort into building those trusted relationships over time.

Prove the Value of What You Deliver

Of course, most customers also apply a set of objective measurements to their vendors – and failure to measure up will eventually trump trust and relationships. To ensure that vendors are appropriately evaluated, some companies have well-defined vendor relationship management programs and processes. GSK, for example, uses after-action reviews. “These reviews help us extract key learnings and ensure we apply them to future engagements,” said the company’s VP of U.S. Technology, Matt Lasmanis.

Ken Piddington, CIO and executive advisor of MRE Consulting, says effective vendor management programs include a component that measures effectiveness with scorecards that break down performance and are weighted based on the partner’s category and type of product/service provided.

Recommendation 3: It’s in your best interest to prove that what you are doing is helping customers achieve their objectives – so do everything you can to prove value, including enthusiastically participating in any required customer evaluations or measurement programs.

In Conclusion: CIO Customers Are Counting on Vendors

While CIO customers and vendors both seem to want the same things, let’s face it: It is up to the vendors to do the heavy lifting to prove they are worthy of “partner” status. What CIOs are telling vendors is really very simple: They’re counting on you. They need to know you’re committing to them in a way that’s going to be mutually beneficial. Beyond delivering the expected high-quality products and services, they want implicit assurances you’re going to look out for their best interests. In turn, you’ll benefit from having their business.

As Scharnagle said, “If we’re successful and are a customer of yours, we should be helping your success, as well.”

Will GDPR Impact How You Interact with Prospects and Customers?

Today’s guest post is an interview with Selling Power editors and Patrick Welch, president of sales enablement company Bigtincan.

 

 

Salespeople routinely jot down critical notes during meetings with prospects. This just makes sense: Details about a prospect’s demeanor or her sentiments about her boss can be invaluable for moving the sale forward.

With that in mind, how will the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) rulings affect how salespeople are allowed to use such critical data? Do such notes have to be destroyed? Do they have to be logged somewhere online? Should salespeople get filing cabinets and fill them with ripped-out notebook pages saying, “Send Lisa the Greenfield case study, cc Bill”?

Ahead of GDPR (which went into effect on May 25) Selling Power editors sat down with Patrick Welch, president of sales enablement company Bigtincan, to break down how B2B sales professionals can manage their data about prospects and customers without a GDPR misstep.

Selling Power (SP): How will sales folks have to change the way they store the notes they take during sales calls and meetings with prospects and customers?

Patrick Welch (PW): Sales folks can still keep a record of information like this as long as it’s not personally identifiable information (in GDPR parlance). But it’s a good practice to get consent by asking your prospect or customer, “Is it OK if I have your contact information and store it?” Sales reps will be in compliance if they gather implicit consent, which is as simple as asking the prospect directly, “Can I follow up with you by emailing or calling you using the contact information you’ve provided to me?”

SP: Do you get the sense that the sales profession is prepared for GDPR? How so/not?

PW: At the data collection level, the answer is yes. However, there still is not a full awareness about the data and different types of data subject to GDPR, and a lack of awareness of the consequences at this point. We don’t know exactly how the regulations will actually convert to business functions, as the GDPR has not yet been tested in court. What we do have are best practices from other regulatory measures and recitals that were written from the authors of the GDPR, which will hopefully be followed by judges.

SP: How can third-party software solutions (data importers, under GDPR) help software exporters prepare?

PW: Speaking from the experience of being an importer (by GDPR’s definition), the importer can best support exporters by providing full insight and transparency to that exporter so they can be aware of where their data and consumers’ data is processed and how it is treated in transit and at rest. 

SP: How much can exporters lean on the promises and services of importers to ensure compliance?

PW: This is critical to complying with the regulation, as much as any other mission-critical system that any exporter customer would rely on. These entities need to ensure their vendors are in compliance when using those systems, and the vendors also have a responsibility to properly handle data and support the regulations. 

SP: What are the main concerns of data exporters? What are you hearing in the industry?

PW: We’ve heard few concerns in the sense of worry; rather, many clients are working to ensure that importers are in compliance with the regulatory guidelines and that their partners/vendors have proper procedures and processes to protect consumer data. This is a little different from the past, because the individual has recourse – unlike with other directives or guidelines.

SP: How are different industries affected by this? For example, do you see a difference between heavily regulated industries (such as healthcare or finance) experiencing GDPR prep differently from, say, retail?

PW: The regulated industries are already accustomed to being prepared for in-depth audit and data trails. The timing of the GDPR comes with a heightened awareness of the social media data processes and really making retail and other consumer-facing industries take a hard look at their own practices – not only to comply but ensure consumer confidence in their brand as well their consumer engagement. 

SP: Anything else you would like to add about data management for sales folks as GDPR approaches?

PW: GDPR shouldn’t really change the day-to-day process of a good salesperson. However, it’s something to be aware of and should have more of dramatic effect with marketers who will need to establish trust in the chain custody of their consumers’ data. Outbound marketing – especially when marketing to European audiences – will be much more difficult as awareness of GDPR grows; but, if marketers are more diligent, their marketing programs should be more effective as they will, by nature, target folks that have already consented to proper engagement. 

For more information about GDPR compliance for sales and marketing, contact Patrick Welch at  [email protected]