1- 330-413-8552 Mark@NoSmokeAndMirrors.com

Sales

Wholesale Distributor and Manufacturer Sales Training Must Transform Due to Market Perfect Storm

 

By Mark Allen Roberts

I enjoy training and coaching salespeople, it’s a passion mine. I led sales training for a global manufacturer, helped develop online training as well as flipped classroom training. I have often helped train wholesale distribution sales teams and coach sales managers. There is a perfect storm brewing that will capsize most manufacture and whole distributor training programs ROI if learning and development teams do not make some strategic course corrections now and batten down the hatches. This post will share the top 4 forces quickly converging on how train and we onboard manufacture and wholesale distributor salespeople.

 

There was a great movie based on a true story titled: The Perfect Storm. This movie shares the story of courageous men and women who risk their lives on rescue vessels and fishing boats. On Halloween night 1991 a fishing boat faced three raging weather fronts that unexpectantly collide to create the fiercest storm in modern history. If you have not seen the move here is a movie trailer. The experienced crew has weathered storms at sea before but never three storms converging all at once making the Perfect Storm.

 

Having trained manufacturer and whole sales distributor sales and sales managers I see a perfect storm, a sales problem brewing on the horizon and in this post I will share the 4 converging forces that will capsize the ROI of sales training if you do not transform your sales training programs now. The bigger impact of this perfect storm will be felt by manufactures and distributors alike in the next five to seven years and will be seen as:

 

  • Sales growth quotas not achieved
  • Lost sales you should have won
  • Decline in customer experience
  • Decline in customer satisfaction
  • Reduced profit margins
  • Higher sales unplanned turnover
  • Large account defections to new competitors
  • Poor Training ROI
  • Manufactures not happy with their distributors
  • Distributors not happy with manufactures

 

So what are these four converging forces about to rain down on how we train our sales people?

 

  1. New Generation of workers: Millennials and Gen Z
  2. Buyers changing how they buy and what they need to buy
  3. The Amazon affect and how it’s shaping buyer service expectations
  4. Top sales talent leaving the workforce

 

 

I think you will agree any one of these would have an impact on your salespeople and how we need to train them differently. However, all these 4 forces are converging over the next few years to make a sales training perfect storm.

 

Let’s unpack each a little more.

 

New Generation of Workers: Millennials and Gen Z Workers

A new generation of workers are entering manufacturers and distributors. By (2025) they will be the majority of your sales team. Each generation is influenced by their education, experiences, technology and geopolitical environment. That is why each generation has its own unique characteristics.

 

On an article titled: 7 surprising traits that make millennials excellent employees the author shares Millennials are:

 

  • Curious
  • Individualistic
  • Want Financial Stability
  • The digital Generation/ tech savvy
  • Want and need regular feedback
  • Like to Collaborate with others

 

Other things to consider is they plan to stay with employers 24-36 months and move on to new roles that teach them new skills. They expect their employers to invest in training and if employers do not, they move on quicker.

 

Let’s take a look at Gen Z workers.

 

The Warton University article shares this about Gen Z in the workplace:

 

“As a group, they are “sober, industrious and driven by money,” reports the Wall Street Journal, but also “socially awkward and timid about taking the reins.” They are risk-averse and more diverse, says Inc. magazine. Forbes says they “want to work on their own and be judged on their own merits rather than those of their team.”

 

 

 

Another article shared these traits for Gen Z:

 

  • Preference for traditional communication
  • Work individually
  • Mobile first habits
  • Motivated by Stability
  • Naturally Competitive
  • High Priority for healthy work life balance

 

Millennials and Gen Z workers will need new forms of training and managers will need to provide frequent coaching and not micromanagement. Both generations want to know the why of what they are doing and they plan to change jobs often.

 

Buyers Changing How They Buy

 

Due to the Internet Of Things buyers can and do conduct online research like never before.

 

  • 70% of the buying process is over before they speak with a salesperson
  • 44% of buyers have already made their buying decision
  • 20% of buyers are only speaking with sales to finalize the shipping and other transaction information.

 

Buyers today want and need salespeople who are trusted advisors who provide valuable insights they cannot find online. 85% of buyers in one survey shared they expect salespeople to connect the dots from what they are selling to the impact it will have on the buyer’s bottom line and sadly only 15% of salespeople are meeting that expectation today.

 

In the past buyers made decisions based on regional proximity. Today with two clicks buyers can buy from all over the world opening up many new competitors you never faced in regional markets.

 

“The Amazon Effect” and how it’s shaping buyer service expectations

 

Entreprenuer.com article shared the Amazon Effect as:

 

“it generally refers to the difficulty many stores — particularly brick-and-mortar outlets — face when they compete with Amazon. The online retailer’s vast selection, fast shipping, free returns, low prices and “Prime” subscription service all serve to create high customer expectations for any retailer hoping to compete.”

 

More and more of Amazon revenues are from B2B sales each year impacting both manufacturers and wholesale distributors alike.

 

When buyers leave work and they go home to their families they are consumers. Each month 197 million consumers get on their devices and visit Amazon. They are experiencing what frictionless purchasing feels like and they can’t help but let it shape the type of experience they expect from their vendors at work.

 

Is buying from you as easy as two clicks?

 

How much friction do your buyers experience when buying from you?

 

Top Sales Talent Leaving the Workforce

 

Each day 10,000 boomers are leaving the workforce. This generation (my generation) often are in leadership positions in manufacturing and whole distributors. We did not grow up with technology but most of us adapted but many did not.

 

I just met with a sales branch manager at a distributor that has a 3-ring notebook with all his key account business cards, vendor sell sheets and a handwritten targeted account list. By the way he consistently is in the top 3 producers in his company. The challenge becomes he has so much what I would refer to as tribal knowledge. Because technology entered into his world at a later time the majority of what he knows is in his head. If you ask him how he consistently delivers the results he produces each year he often cannot tell you. If you complete a top producer analysis assessment you will discover the knowledge and sales competencies that he has.

 

In distribution in particular there are so many vendors, and SKU’s and nuances you just learn to know that are often not captured and it should not surprise us some distributors find it takes a new salesperson as much as six years to truly become effective generating incremental revenue. The manufactures I have served typically see a new salesperson deliver incremental revenue in 12-18 months on the job.

 

What are common characteristics of top performers today?

 

The business owners play book shares how to identify top performers and future leaders:

 

  • Quality – if you are going to do something do it right
  • Skills Development– continuous learning
  • Fearless decision making – they leverage data and make decisions
  • Desire input from others
  • Self-Directed – they have a plan and work the plan
  • Emotionally intelligent-cool under pressure
  • Strong people skills– interpersonal communication and listening skills

 

Boomers who often lead departments and are top performers will be leaving over the next five to seven years. One distributor shared with me they estimate over 50% of their workforce will be retiring over the next eight years.

 

I hear some of you saying: “This is all interesting and I knew most of this, so what about this perfect storm again Mark?”

 

Glad you asked.

 

Your sales training and onboarding must change to support the audience you are now training.

 

You must immediately start capturing that tribal knowledge digitally today.

 

Some key characteristics of modern learning?

 

Asynchronous

Online and flipped classroom application

Trainee is in charge

Fast paced

Just enough

Relevant to the sales role and customers

Just in time with workflow

Mobile friendly

Peer to peer learning critical component

Interactive

Gamification will appeal to the new generations

Virtual Reality and Augmented reality will become the norm

On the job tool and learning aids will be critical

 

If you would like to learn more about modern sales learning programs I wrote a whitepaper titled: 17 training innovations for the future and you can download a copy here.

 

Other consideration before we close?

 

You don’t have the time (6 months) to train new salespeople like the past.

 

Death by PowerPoint instructor led training alone does not work with new workers.

 

Instructor led one and done training without reinforcement or application exercises does not stick.

 

You don’t have 6 months to train salespeople who plan leave in 24 months.

 

On the job training is great if managers do it (50% of the time they do not)

 

The new generation wants coaches not managers.

 

Your sales managers will need strong coaching skills.

 

With every new challenge an innovator will design and deliver new solutions to meet the challenges.

 

What will sales training look like in the next 5 years for manufacturers?

 

What will distributor onboarding and sales training look like?

 

How will these converging four forces impact your sales?

 

What will sales training need to look like if employees only stay 24 months?

 

So there you have it. All the above forces are quickly converging and will create a perfect storm for training manufacturer and wholesale distribution salespeople.

 

What do you think?

 

Is my argument that sales training must change all wet?

 

Is there something I forgot to consider?

 

How does your team plan to weather this storm like we have never seen before?

 

I see this as an urgent and pervasive problem that is growing each month and must be solved.

If you have some ideas how to solve this perfect storm of a sales training problem I would enjoy chatting.

Fix Sales: Could a Business MRI (BMRI) Make Your Sales and Profits Healthier?

 

By Mark Allen Roberts

The new year is underway and soon we will be ending the 1st quarter. When I ask CEO’s and Sales leaders: do you feel you will achieve this year’s plan? I hear I hope so, I think so, and more often than not I hear I’m not sure, it’s too soon to tell. I recently spoke at the NAW event in Washington DC and asked a room of CEO’s and business leaders to raise your hand if you felt with 100% certainty your sales organization would hit your sales and profit objectives in 2020…. not one hand was raised. Will 2020 be like the movie Groundhog Day and be another year like last year where more sales team’s missed quota than achieved it? Or will 2020 be the year you make strategic adjustments to transition your sales organization? In this post we will discuss how to run a BMRI for your business now and detect problems before the end of year when they can become terminal.

 

There was an interesting article in the Wall street Journal some time ago about a reporter who wrote about healthy lifestyles discovering he had a blocked Carotid artery although he was not currently showing any symptoms. As I read this article it reminded me of how many business owners, CEO’s and sales leaders I speak with have deep issues in their businesses that need some kind of an early warning, a business health MRI maybe to identify issues today that could be potentially crippling  at year-end or fatal in the future.

 

Meet Thomas Burton, age 68 a journalist covering the medical field, and he has spent years writing about strokes, most of which are caused by clots blocking blood flow to the brain. Now he faced a question as he shared in this article: “Am I going to become a weird punch line? As in: Did you see that the guy who writes all those stories about strokes just had a big one?” He felt healthy, ate right and exercised. He considered himself a young 68, but inside his body small fat cells were traveling in his blood and forming a clot.

 

He had none of the common stroke symptoms like:

 

Slurred speech

Temporary loss of vision

One side of face droop

Arm or leg weakness

 

As I read the article I learned 700,000 strokes a year are caused by blood clots and 130,000 of them end in death according to the American Stroke Association.

 

A simple scan, an MRI saved this reporters life. I was so moved by this article I signed up for a body scan myself.

 

This led me to a a couple of questions:

 

What if we could provide a scan for the health of your business today and predict the future health of your business?

 

If we used a scan of your businesses health today could it help us prevent your business having a stroke and or going out of business?

 

Would you do it? Why or Why not?

 

What if we had a Business MRI (BMRI) and we could scan your business and share specific areas that need to improve before they become fatal?

 

For over 30 years of my career I was hired to “fix sales problems”. The first thing I would do is assess various parts of the business, understand the voice of their customers today, and determine the organizations’ overall health then work with the leadership teams to improve any areas that are not performing or could be a risk for the organization in the future. This process I used was the same but the time to complete it varied from 3-6 months to a year. (but that was many years ago) As a leadership team we would find, divide and concur the data and I would conduct four legged sales calls with the sales team and visit all the customers who represented 80% of the profits. I was assessing the sales team skills, beliefs, motivation, process, strategy alignment and the tools they were using. I was also capturing the voice of their customers today. Luckily today we have the technology and systems to complete a business health scan (BMRI) in less than three weeks.

 

What if, buried deep in your transaction data and your sales team itself are the answers you are seeking?

  • How effective are we?
  • How much more effective can we be?
  • How long would it take?
  • Does my sales team have the beliefs, motivation, skills and systems support to drive the sales and profit growth I need?

 

Could clots be forming that can cause a sales and or profit stroke in your business or worst?

 

If we could run a diagnostic scan of your sales and your overall business health what would we look for?

 

I would suggest seven (body) parts of your organization to scan.

 

Voice of your customers

 

Net promoter score

Customer satisfaction score

Company knows why they win and why they lose sales

Understand your customer’s buying criteria today

Understand your customers buying process today

Understand the business of your customer’s business

 

 

Systems and Processes

 

Sales Plan

Sales Process that is buyer centric

Systems to support profitable growth

Sales skills and competencies

Is the CRM your single point of truth or a box of lies?

Sales Support

Excess capacity

On time shipments

Shipment accuracy

 

Marketing

 

Web page rank

Web bounce rate

Web content in the form of problems you solve

Testimonials

Lead generation

Quality of leads generated

Cost per lead

Lead rolling 12 months close rate

Case studies with economic impact

Social Media presence

Digital marketing competence

Ease of online engagement

Content

Content, thought leadership positioned in key channel associations

Leads from events

 

 

 

Sales support

 

Ideal customer profiles

Buyer personas by channel and product type

Sales Enablement

Sales tools

Sales Management Skills

Sales Manager Coaching Mastery

 

 

Sales Mindset

 

Beliefs of your salespeople about selling

Motivation of your salespeople

Sales team Accountability

Will they sell?

Emotional intelligence

Figure it out factor

Empathy

Beliefs about your pricing

Beliefs about your quality

Beliefs about the economic value your team delivers

 

 

Sales Skills

 

Qualifying

Discovery

Value based sales skills

Product knowledge

Follow up

Build and leverage relationships

Account management

Project management

Problem solving

Critical thinking

Do what you say you will do

Listening, active listening skills

Business acumen

Market knowledge

Understanding of your customer’s customer

Understanding of how your customer makes profit

Negotiation skills

Closing skills

Understanding of company strategy

Understand sales behaviors that support company strategy

 

 

Metrics and Data

 

On boarding new sales associates and time to revenue

Sales skills assessment

Sales training content, time and delivery method

KPI’s (leading and lagging indicators)

Sales $’s

Cost of sale by customer

Sales growth trend last 24 months

Cash flow

Average sales profit last 24 months, total, by region, by salesperson

Net profit by customer

Share of wallet by key customer

Customer retention %

Customer defections $’s

Net new customer $’s and profit

Net new product and or new service sales and profits

Price override %

Cost of new customer acquisition

Sales turnover (planned and unplanned)

Sales close rate

 

Once we scanned your organization for all of the above, we could diagnose the overall health of your business today and predict the future success of your organization. We are establishing your current state.

Most of the teams I have served have a much clearer vision of their future state they desire than the current state they are working in today. We look at your business and customers today then create a plan, connect the dots between today and where your team desires to be,

 

What would you add to the list?

 

What else would you want to diagnose?

 

How healthy is your business?

 

How healthy is your sales and profits?

 

Are your salespeople doing the sales behaviors you need today?

 

I hear some of you saying: “Wow Mark that’s a lot of work, I am already buried in work and so is my team how will we find the time to gather this information? “

Or another common concern: ” This sounds like a pretty big change and we are not typically strong at change management.”

If you have been following any of my articles or attending webinars there is an assessment tool and process to gather the above data points. We leverage technology to gain the insights we need to shape a healthy business plan for the future.

If you want to DIY your assessment have at it. Before the tools we available today I helped teams gather this much needed data and it typically took 6-8 months.

With the rate of change we are experiencing in this VUCA economy by the time you gathered everything yourself it may not be relevant anymore.

The other consideration you must assess is the organizations culture if you want to DIY your sales and profit health project. Your organization culture is like the blood flowing throughout your body. It touches every organ or as in this case every process and system.

 

Culture 

Innovative or Protect the Fort?

Comfort with change?

Leaders have fixed mindset?

Matrix structure, top down, very flat?

Decision making process?

Leaders open to new ideas or do they have deep biases that may slow down the process?

 

My recommendation is you want a 3rd party to give your business a BMRI so the data is not biased.

 

Be prepared some of what you learn will be great and confirm your beliefs and some of what your 3rd party discovers will make them seem like a Heretic. There is a tremendous value of hiring a heretic when it comes to adding value to your bottom line.

Keep your focus on the desired future state, processes and customers.

Create cross functional teams to help you get there.

You have a smart and experienced team give them data and watch them shine.

When you find the above you will complete a health assessment of your business.

You will have all the data. Where the art of this comes in is seeing all these puzzle pieces and knowing how to assemble them into a plan your team can execute that drives short term gains while establishing long term profitable sustainable growth.

 

If you want help let’s chat.

 

I can help you answer the above questions in 3-4 weeks and establish your current state, then together we can collaboratively build your sales and profit health plan.

 

 

 

 

Add Stardust To Your Sales Training

 

 

How effective is your sales training today? Does your sales training prepare your salespeople to have commercial conversations with customers and prospects in today’s market? How long does it take after completing your sales training do you see trainees create new revenue? The sad reality is most sales training does not produce the results senior sales leaders want and expect. Most “sales” training is actually “product “ training from my observations. Very few sales training programs are leveraging learning science in their training program and course designs and therefore they are destined to fail and not add value. In this post we will share how to fix this common sales problem by adding a little Stardust to your training program.

 

Labor day weekend my wife and I went to New York City to celebrate our 33rd wedding anniversary. We stayed at a wonderful hotel near Broadway the Citizen M and we enjoyed the play Wicked. We visited a fun dueling piano bar as well as the fun Chelsea market.

 

What was most memorable was having breakfast at Ellen’s Stardust Diner on Broadway. As we walked around New York City we determined where we would eat by the length of the lines waiting to be served. The Stardust had a line no matter what time of day you walked by.

 

Once seated we quickly understood this will not be a quiet breakfast. All the waiters and waitresses are graduates of theater programs from all over the world. One after another they performed famous songs from Broadway performances. The music was playing the MC was announcing the next act and at one point confetti was falling.

 

At one point in this entertaining breakfast the MC shared that he was going to pass a bucket around for tips. Each day the tips are divided among the performers and they had to use them to improve their skills with acting lessons, voice lessons and so on.

 

Each day, everyday, all day, the waiters and waitresses practice their skills while serving customers and possibly producers and agents looking for the next star.

 

The results of this program you might ask?

 

The Stardust is the 3rd busiest restaurant in North America. The waiters and waitresses consistently win roles in Broadway plays. The young lady in the photo above will be staring in the next production of Evita.

 

As a sales trainer most of my career, I sat there amazed at how well designed the Stardust is to recruit and train our next stars. The Stardust strategically designed skills development into their program and the waiters and waitresses also own their continuous improvement with additional courses personalized to their specific needs and future roles.

How do we add Stardust to your sales training program?

 

  1. Practice, Practice, Practice
  2. On the Job training and reinforcement
  3. Trainees own continuously improving their skills
  4. Trainees are doing their craft not just learning about it
  5. Producers frequent the Café and recruit the best demonstrated talent
  6. Skills are determined before the role is offered
  7. Everyone must audition, be assessed if you will to enter the program
  8. The experience is fun
  9. The experience was designed to produce stars
  10. The experience consistently produces stars

 

Let’s go back to the questions I asked earlier…

 

Is your sales training working?

 

Sadly 50% of salespeople receive no sales skills training whatsoever. Some receive product training. If you have a sales training program congratulations for winning senior leader support. From my observations over the last 36 years training and coaching salespeople, most sales training programs would score a 6 out of 10 in effectiveness. Most sales training programs I have observed will fail by design.

 

Not spaced learning over time

No peer-to-peer engagement

Instructor led lectures from subject matter experts not trainers

Little if any interaction

No on the job application exercises

No negotiations training

Little if any practice and role-playing

No human-to-human communications skills development

Little if any market training

Little if any business acumen training

Content is not designed to be stacked

No sales manager training for skills like coaching trainees once deployed

 

Very quickly 90% of what your trainees receive is forgotten by design.

 

Does your sales training prepare trainees for commercial conversations with customers and prospects?

 

From my observations most do not. Most sales training programs are heavily weighted in product and how to apply the product technical training. Most sales training programs do a poor job of preparing salespeople for human to human conversations in skills like qualifying opportunities, uncovering buyer goals and problems and more importantly teaching your sellers how to connect the dots to what they are selling to the financial gain it provides the customer. Most trainee’s leave training with a lack of understanding how their future customers make money and what are the key levers to pull to help their clients.

 

How long does it take for a trainee to start adding measurable value?

 

From my observations most trainees leave the drinking from the fire hose sales training experience and start adding measurable value in 18-24 months. Most trainees learn on the job practicing on customers and failing often. It should not surprise us when we see up to 50% of trainees leaving in their first 4 years. Couple this with the fact they report to sales managers who likely were never trained in skills like coaching and mentoring.

 

It’s time our sales training programs leveraged what training science has taught us. If you would like to learn what the future of sales training may look like feel free to download my recent EBook: 17 Training Innovations For Relentless Sales Improvement.

 

 

How do you measure the success of your sales training program?

 

Does your sales training program need fixed?

 

How long should it take for trainees to add value?

 

Does your sales training use spaced and stacked learning designs?

 

Does your organization have a continuous learning culture?

 

Do you offer personalized learning for your current sales team?

 

Does your program assess the skills motivations and beliefs of your trainees?

 

It’s time we leveraged what learning science is telling us and apply it to our sales training programs. Companies who do have sales training need to start seeing an ROI for sales training and much sooner.

Accountability is not a 4 Letter Word When Fixing Sales Problems

 

 

Are your salespeople accountable? When I ask you that question what is the first thing, first emotion, you feel? Why do you think that is? Did less than 60% of your salespeople hit or exceed their sales goals last year? Has someone on your senior management team said: “ we need to hold our salespeople more accountable “? How do we improve accountability and achieve the profitable sales growth we want and need?

 

If you have experienced discussions about sales accountability lately this post is for you and your team and you all need to read: How Did That Happen by Roger Connors and Tom Smith of the Performance Group.

 

I was asked to help a company whose sales had stalled for the last five years. In the first senior management team meeting I attended I heard:

 

The furious young President and CEO shared: “We need to hold our regional sales managers accountable to their growth goals”

 

Marketing quickly chimed in: (or threw kerosene on the fire…you pick): “Why can’t our salespeople follow up on the good leads we send them, if they did we would be hitting our numbers?”

 

Engineering decided they had best pile on: “Why can’t sales sell the innovative new products and features we launched”? 

 

Which triggered the CFO to look up from his laptop and share: “ We need to start getting a return on all the investments we made to grow this business”

 

The COO needed to contribute; “Why can’t sales provide accurate forecasts? Its killing our manufacturing efficiencies, inventory costs and on time shipment goals”?

 

The Partner from the Private Equity Firm who is now attending meetings due to poor financial performance added: “ When will we see results? What specifically are you doing to turn these results around? Do we have the right salespeople?”

 

Their HR Vice President added: “Our salespeople who work from their homes need to stop cutting their grass and golfing and get out in front of customers and make some sales, they need to put in 12-15 hour days like we do”

 

I wish this was a rare meeting and the comments were unusual…but they were not and unfortunately I have heard the above or something similar with many of my past clients. Everyone assumes the solution is sales just needs to work harder and become more “accountable”. Some managers assume salespeople hate to be held accountable, as if it will somehow hurt their motivation. Nothing could be further from the truth.

“Top Performing Salespeople Hold Themselves Accountable”

– Mark Allen Roberts

The reality is top performing sales super stars love to be held accountable and serve on teams of accountable leaders. Sales super stars are like elite athletes. They are very competitive, they train relentlessly, and they are always learning and practicing their craft. From my observations over the past 35 years, most elite salespeople were athletes and now sales is their sport. Top performing salespeople own their goals and strive each day to hit their objectives and drive profitable growth for their organizations.

So where’s the disconnect? …And more importantly how do we fix this problem quickly?

The authors of How Did This Happen do an excellent job of explaining that accountability has two sides:

Taking Accountability For Yourself

 Holding Others Accountable

What we often quickly assume, as the team above thought was a sales accountability problem is actually an organization wide accountability issue. (Sorry) While all of your team is firing missiles from their silos, the true problem is your entire organization lacks a culture of accountability and this must be corrected.

 

Have you ever worked for someone who assigned you very specific objectives and held you accountable to your goals but they never follow up on emails, signatures needed, budget approvals and other tasks they committed to? How did that make you feel? Were you more or less motivated to achieve your objectives?

 

So if our manager is accountable it impacts our performance? ….Absolutely!

 

The good news is your team is motivated by meaningful work. They want to help the organization grow profitability and in the process contribute and one day retire from your organization.

 

The elite salespeople are accountable. They are out everyday hunting for opportunities to serve your current customers and searching for new accounts with problems your organization solves.

 

Still doubt your salespeople are accountable?

 

Let me ask you a few questions…

 

Where else in your organization are people as accountable as your salespeople?

 

  • Their sales are tracked real time, you can see their activity and results
  • You can see what they plan to do next in the CRM
  • You can read what happened in the last meeting in the CRM
  • In your weekly call in meetings they share what they set out to do, what they did, what they will do and what help they may need from you
  • You can see who they are selling, what they are selling them and at what price
  • You get reports showing profit by customer, salesperson, region, district, country (there is no hiding in sales)
  • Their expense reports tell you if they are making good decisions based on return on investment, if they are managing their time appropriately and you can see where they have been and how long they were there
  • They often do weekly call reports
  • You complete customer surveys and ask about their service
  • Other executives attend customer meetings with them
  • If they do not make the sales to achieve their sales goals they do not make the targeted income they were promised

 

So again, are you sure you have a sales accountability problem?

 

The book: How Did This Happen is brilliant!

 

It introduces the concept of an accountability sequence that is broken down into two parts.

 

The first half is the outer ring as they call it. Here is where you form, communicate, align and inspect expectations. This is where most managers fail. This step is about your managers setting clear reasonable expectations.

 

The second half is the inner ring where you engage in accountability conversations in a professional way to deal with unmet expectations. (Emphasis on words professional way)

 

What I enjoyed most about this book is it sets the tone to lose all your emotional assumptions about accountability and it teaches you how to be and lead your teams in a professional and accountable way.

 

This book provides many tools and assessments to help you determine where your team is in the competency of accountability and guides you how to improve.

 

The book shares five reasons people do not hold others accountable:

 

  1. Fear of offending someone or jeopardizing a personal relationship
  2. The feeling they lack the time to follow up
  3. A lack of faith that the effect will make a difference
  4. A worry that by holding someone else accountable their may expose their own accountability failures
  5. A reluctance to speak due to fear of potential retaliations

 

(Did any of the above resonate with you and your team?)

 

Lets get back to the small company. The senior management team meeting ended and the CEO and CFO asked I stay in the room. They were concerned I was taking notes but did not offer any advice or solutions. I shared I have a process and I have noted everyone’s concerns assumptions and perceptions and now I need the voice of your customers and your salespeople and we will develop a strategy to improve your bottom line results.

 

What did I find after spending just under six months in the market traveling with their salespeople and and doing voice of customer interviews with top distributors and end customers?

 

  • Customers openly shared how difficult the company was to work with
  • Their order follow up was poor and orders often had pricing errors
  • On time delivery was under 60% hurting distributor relationships with their customers
  • Their product was plagued with quality issues resulting in warrantee claims
  • Warranty claims just after purchase negatively impacted distributor relationships with end users
  • New products over the past 5 years were historically launched before they were ready. Distributors now wait at least 18 to 24 months before buying new products because they feel the company will have “worked all the bugs out by then“
  • Their salespeople, regional managers and distributors were never trained in commercial selling skills
  • Their salespeople were exhausted and spending more time of tracking late orders and warranty parts than selling
  • Their customer service team was never trained and over 70% of incoming calls went to voicemail
  • Their sales compensation plan was so complicated their salespeople did not understand it, trust it, and often found the company made errors in their commissions and it often took over 90 days to correct them

 

Did this company have a sales accountability problem or a company wide accountability issue?

 

In chapter 9 the authors give you a simple yet brilliant model to assess accountability. It starts with asking: Is the person above or below the line

Above the line

  • Do it
  • Solve it
  • Own it
  • See it

Below the line

  • Wait and see
  • Cover your tail
  • Blame others and finger point
  • “Not my job”

Accountability is not a 4-letter word to elite salespeople. They hold themselves accountable and they must know you are accountable as well. They are constantly training, learning and practicing to improve their skills.

We must also understand accountability moves above and below the line for your people ( and yourself) . Once you have read this book you will quickly identify when a victor has become a victim and you are provided tools to help coach them to get them back on track.

I highly recommend you add this book to your library, read it, share it among your leadership team then share it with your sales managers and salespeople.

As for the company above…their sales grew from $14 million to over $80 million in the next 6 years once everyone understood their customers expectations and aligned their strategies and goals to achieve them. We became customer centric and when we did the silo’s went away. We all shared cross functional goals and the bottom line became healthy. So healthy they were acquired a few years later.

 

I saved the tough questions for last.

 

How accountable is your team?

 

How accountable are your salespeople?

 

Has anyone on your team said: “Our salespeople need to be more accountable”?

 

How accountable are you?

 

If the last question hit a nerve then you really need to read this book and help your team understand what accountability is and how to hold others accountable in a professional way. We all drift above and below the line of accountability. This book helps you identify it sooner and provides many tools and coaching ideas to getting your team back on course to profitable performance.

It’s Not What You Sell ,But How You Sell It …That Drives Sales Growth

 

 

The role of Sales has changed and continues to change year over year. Salespeople were once the keepers of the keys in terms of product information, application experience, competitive analysis, needs assessments and so on. Today a great deal of what we used to do to provide value to customers can quickly be accomplished in the digitized world with a click of a mouse. Studies indicate as much as 70% of the sales process is over before a customer speaks with a salesperson today.

What can sales people do to differentiate?

What are the top 5% of sellers consistently doing to meet and exceed their sales objectives?

Lee Salz’s new book: Sales Differentiation, 19 powerful strategies to win more sales at the prices you want helps salespeople and sales managers adjust to the sales environment of today and provide value to their customers.

When I meet with sales teams or conduct workshops I often ask a question…

How have you seen sales change in the last 10 years?

What I often hear includes:

The internet of things made buyers much more informed

We face buying committees instead of a single decision maker

Buyers are much busier wearing more hats, managing more products and it is more difficult to win meeting times

Our competitors caught up with us in quality and service and buyers are commoditizing our products and services

I don’t have enough hours in a day to do everything expected of me today

All else being equal, buyers are making their decisions based on price and we lose

Today sales is a 27/7 job and buyers expect answers in minutes

Social selling, social buying, the ability of buyers to do research in an instant

Buyers don’t ask for referrals anymore, they find our customer feedback ( good and bad) on their own

And the list goes on…

With all of the above and more seeming to commoditize our products and services is it any surprise salespeople are so quick to discount price?

For years I have done win-loss analysis calling customers we won as well as those deals we lost.

When I ask sales why they think they lost the sale I hear “Price” as their number one reason.

However when I speak with buyers they share two things very often:

We are at a critical tipping point for sales and how we sell today.

As Lee Saltz shares in his new book it is not just what you sell but how you sell it that can be your differentiation in the crowed and busy market of today.

To win deals at the price your team wants (and needs) you need to differentiate.

Why this book is important for sellers today is it provides 19 differentiations they can apply today that will help your salesperson standout among all the competition and help you win deals you should be winning.

How can you apply this book to drive sales growth for your team?

  1. I suggest you buy a copy of this book for each of your salespeople and tell them we will have a book review in 45 days.
  2. Have a virtual training and ask each salesperson 4-5 of the differentiation strategies they plan to start using.
  3. Over the following 3-4 months travel with your salespeople on four legged sales calls and observe. Are they applying the differentiation strategies or are the selling the way they always have? Coach and encourage them to use these strategies.
  4. After you have traveled with your entire sales team note the differentiation strategies they chose to use and rank them based on use.
  5. Use your findings to build short micro learning training courses that reinforce those strategies.
  6. Capture team success stories and share them.
  7. Use the new micro learning training courses as a part of your sales on-boarding training for new team members.

We need to fix this sales problem of commoditization and helping your salespeople differentiate themselves in how they sell is a smart strategy.

If you follow this advice you should expect to experience the following:

  • Improved close rate
  • More opportunities
  • Shorter selling cycle
  • Higher profit per sale
  • Increase in cross and upselling
  • More sales team members achieving quota
  • ( and much happier Monday morning executive meetings for you)

How about your company…

Could teaching your salespeople how to differentiate themselves in their crowded markets help your sales results?

Could how you sell become your team’s distinctive competence?

How often are your salespeople asking for price discounts?

What % of your salespeople achieved and or exceeded sales quota this year?

Is your team’s sales quota increasing or decreasing next year? (Yah, that’s what I thought)

What % of sales deals won was discounted in the last 6-8 months? (that many?)

Why wouldn’t you try to strategically adjust the way your team sells and let the way they sell become your differentiation strategy?

 

 

 

 

Are you a Prisoner to an Out dated Sales Process? Break Free with VOC and Sales Enablement

 

 

In my last post I shared how to determine if your sales team is following an out dated sales process. If your team is experiencing declining sales, lower profit per sale, losing orders you should have won and a decline in your sales close % you have a out dated sales process. If your sales team can’t seem to open new markets or sell new products you have an outdated sales process. In this post I share how you can stop being a prisoner to an out dated sales process and break free of poor sales results.

The first step in solving any problem is clearly defining the issues and impacts or as I like to say: “ throwing the skunk on the table”.

Sales is a changing process in today’s markets and we must constantly be sensing those changes and adjusting to them.

Some sales problems sales teams are experiencing today include:

  • Buyers going dark, you thought you had good sales meetings and now no feedback
  • Longer sales process from first meeting to close
  • More influencers involved in purchase decisions
  • Gross margin per sale declining
  • More competitors
  • Strong price pressure
  • Buyers commoditizing products and services
  • Up to 70% of buying journey is over before buyers speak with a salesperson
  • Buyers choosing to do nothing
  • Buyers choosing to solve their needs internally
  • Difficulty in having discussions with buyers
  • Faster service requirements
  • Buyers wanting JIT and not large stocking orders
  • Buyers needing 100% on time delivery
  • Higher quality expectation
  • Real time conversations – wanting answers now when they have them, immediate response

The above are some challenges sales teams are facing with buyers today and there are many more.

When sales, marketing, customer service, Hr and operations align sales teams break free of the above sales problems and win more business.

The trouble is sales and marketing are often not working strategically together and this leaves them both in a prison of their own making.

Are you familiar with what is referred to as : The Prisoner’s Dilemma ?

I found the below explanation on Wikipedia in case this is new to you.

 

The prisoner’s dilemma is a standard example of a game analyzed in game theory that shows why two completely “rational” individuals might not cooperate, even if it appears that it is in their best interests to do so. It was originally framed by Merrill Flood and Melvin Dresher working at RAND in 1950. Albert W. Tucker formalized the game with prison sentence rewards and named it, “prisoner’s dilemma”

Two members of a criminal gang are arrested and imprisoned. Each prisoner is in solitary confinement with no means of communicating with the other. The prosecutors lack sufficient evidence to convict the pair on the principal charge. They hope to get both sentenced to a year in prison on a lesser charge. Simultaneously, the prosecutors offer each prisoner a bargain. Each prisoner is given the opportunity either to: betray the other by testifying that the other committed the crime, or to cooperate with the other by remaining silent.

The offer is:

  • If A and B each betray the other, each of them serves 2 years in prison
  • If A betrays B but B remains silent, A will be set free and B will serve 3 years in prison (and vice versa)
  • If A and B both remain silent, both of them will only serve 1 year in prison (on the lesser charge)

It is implied that the prisoners will have no opportunity to reward or punish their partner other than the prison sentences they get, and that their decision will not affect their reputation in the future. Because betraying a partner offers a greater reward than cooperating with them, all purely rational self-interested prisoners would betray the other, and so the only possible outcome for two purely rational prisoners is for them to betray each other.[1] The interesting part of this result is that pursuing individual reward logically leads both of the prisoners to betray, when they would get a better reward if they both kept silent. In reality, humans display a systemic bias towards cooperative behavior in this and similar games, much more so than predicted by simple models of “rational” self-interested action.[2][3][4][5] A model based on a different kind of rationality, where people forecast how the game would be played if they formed coalitions and then maximized their forecasts, has been shown to make better predictions of the rate of cooperation in this and similar games, given only the payoffs of the game.[6]

So what does the “prisoners dilemma” have to do with fixing the above sales problems teams are facing today?

A great deal!

When I helped sales and marketing teams in the past, I always heard the same things…

Marketing would share…

  • Sales is a bunch of “prima donna’s” and they want everything served to them spoon fed on a silver platter
  • Sales has no appreciation for marketing
  • We spend so much time and money creating sales tools and we latter find no one is using them
  • I can’t produce great content if I don’t know what’s going on in the market and sales will not take me on calls
  • We give sales leads and they can’t close them
  • We are crushing our leads generated goals but sales can’t seem to close them
  • Why can’t sales sell new products?
  • Why can’t sales sell more of what we have?
  • Why can’t sales win new business in new markets we identified?

Sales would also say….

  • Marketing has no idea what its really like out here..Selling today
  • Marketing spends all this time and money on new brochures and new sell sheets but they are all ”company speak” I can’t use them.
  • Marketing feels so distant from what is really going on out here today its like they think our customers are like they were 10 years ago
  • Marketing gives me “lists” not “leads” ( there’s a big difference) to chase and they are worthless. It takes time to follow up on each and none of them are actually leads.
  • My buyers say they can’t find what they need on our web site
  • I can’t find the sales tools I need quickly in our system
  • We have the worst web site in our industry
  • I spend more time building sales tool than selling anymore
  • if our product had just one more feature I could sell it
  • Marketing launches this new product, or asks us to open new markets but we don’t have the tools to do so

 

The Prisoners Dilemma…instead of working together many teams choose to stay in a poor performance prison for years to come.They betray each other and in the process lengthens  their time in poor results prison.

 

What if Marketing and Sales would stop complaining about each other and defending their silos and work together? If they did they can both break free from the prison of poor performance metrics and in about 8-12 months be free to be the market leaders they were meant to be.

How do sales and marketing teams break free?

Voice of the customer 

Sales Enablement

 

Since I have shared close to 20 articles on the voice of the customer and shared the financial the impact this work has on sales and bottom line, in this post I will discuss the power of sales enablement.

What is Sales Enablement?

 

Lets quickly review 5 definitions…

 

A strategic, cross-functional discipline designed to increase sales results and productivity by providing integrated content, training and coaching services for salespeople and front-line sales managers along the entire customer’s buying journey, powered by technology.

Brain shark 

Sales enablement is the technology, processes, and content that empowers sales teams to sell efficiently at a higher velocity..

Hubspot

“Aligning marketing processes and goals, and then arming sales with tools to improve sales execution and drive revenue.” 

 The Pedowitz Group

Sales enablement is the process of providing the sales organization with the information, content, and tools that help sales people sell more effectively.

TOPO Blog

“Sales enablement is a strategic, ongoing process that equips sales teams to have consistently effective engagements with prospects and customers throughout the buyer’s journey.”  – Highspot

From my experience, Sales Enablement is about intimately knowing how your buyers buy today and what they need to buy today. Secondly it’s about having the right content at the right time in the buying journey, in the right format that helps your buyers buy. Sales enablement is about teaching your salespeople a sales process that mirrors how buyers are buying. It is about serving your customers .It is about training and coaching salespeople on what you have, where they can find it and when they should use it.

How about your sales and marketing teams?

Are your teams hitting “their goals” but your overall company is losing?

Do you have a sales enablement? How is it working?

Is there any reason why sales enablement would not work in your sales and marketing efforts’?

When sales and marketing teams start working together strategically with voice of the customer and sales enablement, sales and profits increase, new products achieve ROI targets and customer satisfaction scores climb. Sales becomes less of an art and more of a science. 

In future posts we will unpack sales enablement and how you can use sales enablement to break free from a prison of outdated sales processes and grow sales profitably.

 

 

Is Your Team Using an Out Dated Sales Process?…answer a few short questions to find out

 

 

Many sales teams will have a sales problem this year. They will fail to achieve their sales and profit goals. Is it a sales team motivation issue? Compensation issue? Sales is not working hard enough?…Maybe… but from what I have experienced in most cases sales teams are failing to hit their goals because they are using an out  dated sales process. They are working hard (probably harder and longer than ever before) to execute an out dated sales process that no longer works with how your buyers buy today.In this post I help business leaders quickly determine if they have a dated sales process so you have time to adjust.

 

Everyday salespeople are hitting the streets working hard to achieve their sales goals with the tools and training they were given. Some will hit their goals and have a great year but unfortunately most will not. For those who fail to achieve their sales targets they are often resorting to what I refer to as “Bare Knuckle Selling” . They don’t understand what their buyers want , what criteria buyers are using today, and they do not know the buyer’s buying process. They resort to old out dated sales processes and they will have sales problems this year too if things don’t change quickly. For your sales team members it feels like they are pushing mud uphill and not making any progress.They are doing what they were told to do, using the tools and training they were given but nothing seems to work.

 

In this post I offer 15 questions for business leaders to help you determine if your team is using a dated sales process and what to do if you need to update it.

 

Let’s agree the buying process our buyers’ use has changed significantly in the past 5-10 years and continues to adjust and evolve. If you believe your buyers have not changed how they buy, they are not needing new criteria and there are not more people involved in the buying decision, and your buyers are not doing research online before they buy…you are wrong.( sorry)  It is like your salespeople are playing darts blindfolded. Once in a while a dart may hit the target, but most of their attempts fail to achieve sales velocity. They resort to selling on price and we all know the impact that has on your margins.

 

Sales and marketing teams who recognize strategic shifts in the buying journey and adjust increase sales profitably.

 

Unfortunately most sales teams either lack a sales process or  they are executing an out  dated sales process and they will experience sales problems this year. The severity of the sales problem you will experience is directly related to how far your sales process is disconnected to how buyers are buying today. Luckily most companies just need to make a few minor tweaks to their sales process and build a few new sales tools. However some teams struggle needlessly each year and are selling like their company did 20 years ago.

 

A friend who owns a manufacturing business asked me out to dinner and shared the following :

 

“What keeps me up at night is wondering…will we have a good sales year this year? How can I be sure? As you know I am not a sales guy, my experience is in  in operations and finance. My team assures me this will be our “best year ever” but how can I know for sure? (They told me the same thing last year and we missed our financial metrics significantly). What bothers me most is ….are there any better ways, strategies our team should be using to insure we meet our plan this year? I wish sales was more logical like operations, more of a science. Our top competitor grew last year and we did not. My gut says there has to be better and smarter ways are out there. Sales should not be so variable, so hit or miss. I can’t have another year with our investors where we find out third quarter our plan did not work.”

 

I asked a question:

 

When was the lat time you and your sales team reviewed your repeatable sales process?

 

If you are like most teams you either lack a formal repeatable sales process or the one you are using is out dated.

 

It sounds like the selling process your team is using feels more like an art than a science?

 

“How can I know if we have an out dated sales process?”

 

Answer a few questions for me…

 

  1. What events trigger your buyers to shop today? Please list at least two.

 

  1. Where do your buyers go when they are looking for a new supplier, new product to solve a problem?

 

  1. When buyers in your industry shop what criteria do they use to make their buying decisions? List and rank the top three.

 

  1. How many people at your ideal customers are involved in the buying decision today? List at least 4 and what each needs.

 

  1. What sales tools, process and or content did sales use to open your last three new accounts? List three.

 

  1. List at least 3 urgent buyer problems your product or service solves for buyers in your industry.

 

  1. What % of the buying journey is done online prior to your fist meeting with a new customer?

 

  1. Why do your current buyers buy from you?

 

  1. In the last 10 quotes that did not buy from you? What were the top three reasons?

 

  1. What is your product’s value proposition that resonates most with your buyers today? Explain the specific financial impact to their business.

 

  1. Who are your top three competitors? what are their value propositions?

 

  1. When buyers choose one of your competitors over your company what is the reason specific to each competitor? List two per competitor.

 

  1. When a new buyer contacts your company, how (what process) and where did they find your company?

 

  1. When a possible net new customer visits your website, where do they spend the most time and what content bought them to your site?

 

  1. Can you describe your top 4 buyer personas? What are they and what does each need to make a buying decision today?

 

We went through the questions and for many he assured me “someone” on his team knew the answers but I could tell he felt uneasy.He asked if I wouldn’t mind emailing these questions and he would ask them at his Monday senior leadership team meeting. I shared how I used to qualify and coach new clients with these questions to help me know where to help most.

 

He suggested I should share our conversation on my blog to help others who may be thinking and feeling the same way as him, which prompted this post.

 

Below are some guidelines for you to consider based on how your team answers these questions and what the probability is your will hit your sales goals this year.

 

If your sales and marketing teams could quickly and confidently answer 13-15 of the questions…congratulations! Your team is in the top 10% of sales and marketing teams. You know your markets and buyers intimately. You know your buyers’ key criteria and the buying journey they take to purchase products. The plan you have should be market focused and customer centric and you will, if your team executes the plan and uses your sales process and sales tools at the right time in the buying process, have a good sales year.

 

If your sales and marketing teams could quickly and confidently only answer 10-12 of the questions… your team is doing good and with some voice of the customer work and a few win-loss calls your team can be a top performing sales team in your industry. You need to do some research over the next 30-60 days and adjust your plan, sales process, create new sales tools and train your teams how and when to use them. You could still have a very strong sales and profit year.

 

If your sales and marketing teams could quickly and confidently only answer 7-9 of the questions… your team has been experiencing some sales and profit challenges over the past few years. You have seen your sales success be highly dependent upon the purchases from large customers your team has sold for 10+ years but you have not been successful at opening net new customers in your markets. You have seen your gross profit margins erode at your large accounts over the last 5 years and if you Google problems your company solves you may not be found in the first two pages of a search. If your customers have a good sales year your team should have an OK sales year, but your bottom line may see some continued erosion like the last few years. Your team will continue to work on operational efficiencies as in the past but they will not contribute as much this year. You have a outdated sales process and you need to update it quickly. You need to do voice of the customer research quickly and map the current buying journey your buyers go through and create a new sales process that mirrors what your buyers want and need today. If you do this quickly your team could have a good sales year.

 

 

If you and your sales and marketing teams could quickly and confidently only answer 6 or less of the questions… Your team will have a sales problem this year and will not hit sales plan and significantly miss your net income target. Sales are flat if not declining for the past few years. Your top sales and marketing leaders may have said when asked about the poor performance:“ our markets are down and we are waiting for the business to return to normal again.” I am sorry to be the one to tell you this is the new normal and you must adjust, you and your team must adapt and quick. Like a ship at sea with a strong wind but no rudder to strategically steer your sales and marketing teams, sales feels more like an art than a science. Your senior leaders meetings are not fun and your company owners and or investors are looking to make changes if the performance does not improve. You will miss plan this year and you will likely see some of your key sales team contributors “just leave” to the surprise of the rest of your team. You will see at least one maybe two of your top customers fade away in the next 12-18 months. You need to quickly do voice of the customer market work, win-loss work and develop a new strategy and new sales process with the right tools at the right times for your buyers or you will have a big sales problem.(again)

 

I was happy to hear in a voice mail message my friend’s team could answer 11 of the above questions. He went on to share what bothered him though was how long it took some of his team to answer these questions.I shared if your team needs hours/days/weeks to answer these questions, they are probably tracking dated performance indicators and not the right KPI’s that drive success today and he may want to adjust what they report on each Monday.

 

How would your team answer the above questions?

 

Are the answers based on current market conditions or “ the way we have always done things around here”?

 

Can your sales and marketing leaders quickly answer these questions or do they need to do some homework?

 

I hope this post helped you do a gut check with your sales and marketing teams to see just how much they know about your markets, buyers, and the buying process your buyers are using today.

 

In my next post I will share how market-leading teams are constantly sensing for shifts in how their buyers buy and the criteria they use to buy, and they adapt.

 

One strategy market leading organizations are using to adapt, align and improve their sales is Sales Enablement.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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