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Tips to Engage with New Customers

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As a business owner, it’s important for you to be constantly working on the development of your company. Part of the development is continuously bringing new customers to your business through referrals, social media, direct traffic to your website, or your organic reach. By doing so, you’ll find your profit increases, allowing you to spend this revenue on other areas of your business, such as your marketing team or developing your sales team.

 

In simple terms, sales is an art and a science. The art is in having conversations that lead to revenue. The science is data-driven sales. What does the data tell you about your ideal new customer? What have you seen help a buyer on their journey to becoming a customer? The more customers who visit your site or contact your sales team, the more likely you will make a sale as long as they match your ideal customer profile. So how do you reach new customers? From improving your website to entering new markets and using conference translation software to help you with this, we have put together our guide on tips for reaching new customers.

Improve your website

When was the last time you performed a digital footprint audit of your website? Your website is one of the most important sales tools you have. If it’s not modernized, then you may need a new one. If it is, then using a UX/UI expert could help you spot potential opportunities within your website and any errors that could reduce the number of new customers reaching out to you. Your website is essentially a shop floor but through the web. Every day customers could search for your services, but if your website is not up to scratch, they could be landing on your site but leaving instantly – just like you would if you walked into a store only to notice it looks a little run down.

Engage with customers leveraging social media 

One trait all top-performing salespeople have in common is they are active in social selling. They reach out to customers on various social platforms to complement their efforts by cold calling, attending conferences and trade shows, as well as their email campaigns.

Ask for referrals

Do you ask your sales team to ask for referrals? It’s a simple tip but can work extremely well. Whenever they complete a sale, and they feel the customer is happy with the service they provided, simply ask them if they know of anyone who could benefit from your services. You could ask them to reach out to you or ask them if you can reach out on their behalf. It’s a well-known fact that referrals convert to sales a lot quicker than any other technique. Plus, you can add a referral scheme to entice people to refer even when you haven’t asked, increasing your referrals even more.

 

When one association interviewed customers, they found over 80% would refer a salesperson if they were asked to do so, but sadly, less than 15% of salespeople ask for referrals

 

What tips do you have for reaching new customers?

Are there any tips from the above that you found particularly helpful?

Let us know in the comment box below.

 

Would you like to chat about how to engage with more new customers? Please send me a message or give me a call.

 

 

Voice of Market Identifies “Roundabouts” in your Sales Process

The voice of your customer (VoC) and the voice of your market (VoM) are powerful data points if leveraged correctly. Your customers and your markets are eager for suppliers who take the time to understand them, their buying process, and the criteria they need to make buying decisions. Market-leading companies are constantly assessing how buyers buy and any shifts that occur in their markets and they adjust. One common outcome of the voice of the customer work is changing your repeatable sales process and eliminating any roundabouts in the sales process where sales stall or get lost.

I was asked to help the leader in marketing and product training develop a seminar on how to help companies tune in to their markets. The owners wrote a best-selling book titled Tuned in. (a must-read if you have not read it yet) This is what I have done my entire career and I was so excited for the opportunity to help thousands of companies and serve this market-leading team. Then 2008 hit. We like many companies experienced a large market shift, particularly in the tech market space and it was not the right time to launch a new seminar.

After that market shift of 2008, the company experienced a significant drop in their on-site customer-specific training. They offered public training where we would fill a conference center and train people from many different companies. One result of the public training was often someone coming forward after the class asking if we could do the same training but just for his or her team. We historically had a very high close rate when this occurred and we would provide an amazing onsite training experience. On-site training is a great way to get an entire team aligned and using the same framework.

Once the stock market dropped we saw a significant decrease in onsite sales. The company asked if I would help lead sales out of this recent sales decline.

We conducted win-loss calls with all our recent customers and the customers we recently did not win. (Just as we taught in our training) We asked open-ended questions about how they bought now after the stock market crash.

Was their process different?

Did they require new criteria to make buying decisions?

Who else in their organization was involved, if any in the buying decision? And so on…

What we learned was the following:

  • Human resources no longer could make buying decisions alone over a specific $ value
  • Human resources now had to sell the CEO and CFO on why they should invest in this training
  • The customers we won shared how they would prefer speaking with one of our instructors much earlier in the sales process

Based on the above and much more feedback we mapped the buying process and next to it our repeatable sales process. What we looked for were common roundabouts where the opportunity to serve our clients spun out of control. These roundabouts are always opportunities for new sales tools. For example, since the human resources group now had to internally sell the CEO, we proactively provided a short slide deck written for a CEO buyer persona as a sales tool.

We introduced our instructors much earlier in the sales process as they requested and often asked human resources to invite others who could authorize the expenditure.

We developed a new sales process with new sales tools and trained our sales team.

Within 3 months sales started to climb and after 12 months we realized a sales increase of over 150%.

How about your company…

When did your team last capture the voice of your customers?

Did it result in a new sales process?

Did you identify new sales tools needed to help your buyers buy?

When did your team last capture the voice of your market?

strong>Did you map how your buyers are buying today? Notice any changes?

Did you adjust your sales process based on how buyers are buying today?

Do your markets have new problems that need to be solved since the last time you did a value proposition audit?

We serve dynamic markets that continue to shift and change. How many changes has your team identified in the last year? Two years? Five years? Did you adjust to those shifts strategically or did you, like many teams tell sales to “just make it happen, work harder”?

If you have not recognized any market shifts nor changed your sales process or designed new sales tools it is broken but there is still time to tune in to how your buyers are buying and the market voice.

Spend time in front of your customers and understand how they are buying today, what they must-have today and make the necessary adjustments. I estimate as high as 60% -70% of companies are not actively listening for the voice of their market today. Of the 40%-30% who are, less than 10% will actually adjust their sales process and design new sales tools.

Why wouldn’t your team want to be one of those top 10% who hit and surpassed their sales numbers next year?

There is power in capturing the voice of the customer and how you use what you have learned to adjust your repeatable sales process. Simple often-minor adjustments can have a huge impact on your sales close rate. Adjusting your sales process to how your buyers buy today creates a GPS for your salespeople to follow to the sale.

Who Owns the Voice of Your Market and Voice of Your Customer? ..Hint (not sales!)

In my last few posts, I have been sharing the power of capturing the voice of your customers and the voice of your markets. Understanding how your buyers buy today, the journey they take, and the criteria they must have is the quickest way to increasing sales. Who should own the voice of the market and customer? The answer may surprise you: Not Sales! In this post, I will share who should own the voice of the customer and share a short video on the impact this information will have.

Who owns the voice of the market, the voice of the customer in your company?

Before we unpack this topic we need to understand the differences between the voice of the customer (VoC) and the voice of the market (VoM).

Voice of the Customer

“Voice of the Customer (VoC) is a marketing research technique that encompasses the collective insights of your customers’ needs, wants, perceptions, preferences, and expectations.”

Voice of Market

Voice of the Market (VOM) is different in that it incorporates input from the greater market. The market contains not only your customers but also those who chose not to buy your solution – those who bought someone else’s product and those who just didn’t make a decision.”

 On Product Management 

Capturing the voice of your customer (VOC) is critical to providing your customers the best overall buying experience and growing sales profitably. I also use the voice of the customer to help me understand how customers describe the problems my clients solve in similar markets. The Voice of the market is even more powerful because it not only captures your customer but also captures prospects in the market you want to serve as well as customers you once sold. The voice of the Market ( VOM) helps you scale your solutions to unresolved market problems to new customers in the markets you serve.

Who owns the voice of the market and customer?

Marketing!

Why?

A few reasons I have experienced over the years:

First, you want sales selling. I don’t mean to sound trite but this is about focus. You want your sales resources selling and not conducting market research. You do not want them doing any behaviors that do not align with their specific objectives and hitting their sales numbers. They need to be driving to serve their customers and solve their unresolved problems.

“Diluted Sales focus causes diluted sales results.”

– Mark Allen Roberts

Second, you want unfiltered feedback from your customers and markets. What if the reason why buyers don’t buy is the most common reason: the buyer-felt sales did not adequately understand the problem to be solved so they did not trust their proposal to fix the problem. Will sales tell you that? Maybe but it would be a difficult thing to share. For example, what if “the why “your customers do not buy more is they were unaware of the new products you introduced over a year ago?

Third, your customers have a relationship with your salesperson. It would be very difficult and uncomfortable for them to share concerns directly with the salesperson that calls on them. However, your customers will share feedback if asked correctly to give them a better overall buying experience.

Forth, your salespeople are trained to sell. Great right? Not when it comes to understanding your buyers and how they buy. Your salespeople may hear something then start selling instead of actively listening and capturing the entire thought. The quickest way to shut down a good voice of the customer, the voice of market conversation is to try to sell through objections the buyers’ shares.

Marketing owns the voice of the market and the voice of the customer.

If you are like a number of companies you may not have marketing team members experienced conducting interviews. If that is the case I highly recommend you hire a 3rd party to interview your customers and markets. This is by far the best method of gathering what your buyers need and how they buy today. The outside 3rd party will interview your customers, customers you lost, and prospects you always wanted to be customers. Another approach would be to have a senior member of the leadership team conduct these interviews. As VP of sales and marketing, I would often conduct this research.

The only companies you should never interview are new companies that are currently at some stage of the sales process. You do not want anything to interrupt the flow of the sale through the funnel. I have seen companies inexperienced with this process call prospects they are quoting in an effort to help close the sale faster and lose the sale entirely.

Make sure when working with a 3rd party you are clear about the deliverables.

Possible market work deliverables include:

  • Present raw data
  • Map buying journey
  • Identify buyer personas
  • Prepare a summary report / Identify shifts and trends
  • Prepare a summary report and recommendations based on the raw data

When I conduct customer and market voice research I present a summary report and recommendations for a specific project fee based on the number of people interviewed, the time to accomplish the project, and how the customers and markets are interviewed. Some clients ask I personally meet with 2-5 of their customers so the cost is higher than a phone interview due to travel expenses.

I feel I need to warn you at this point: In this capturing voice process, you will hear a number of great things, things that will make you proud of your team. You will probably also hear things your customers believe to be true (their perceptions) that may or may not be true. Keep in mind your customer’s perception is their reality and that is what you must use in your strategic adjustments.

After the market work your team will be nervous.

Sales, marketing, operations, and even quality will be nervous about what your customers and markets share. As the leader in the organization, you must set the stage for this exercise.

When I work with teams I have four meetings:

  • Project launch meeting with the senior management team – I share what we will be doing, how we will do it, who we need to speak with and what some outcomes may be. I emphasize this is not a witch-hunt, but an opportunity to learn how to make strategic adjustments that insures we all hit our numbers. This meeting is about education and expectations
  • CEO/President/VP of marketing/VP of sales – In this meeting I share my summary report and some specific customer interviews with raw data and recommendations, adjustments to the sales process, and needed new sales tools. This meeting is about understanding opportunities not finding a throat to choke. We decide what we will share with the team and in what depth.
  • Senior leadership team – present summary of finds and recommendations without specific customer interviews. I ask the CEO and other leaders to prioritize the action items and commit to investment if required in this meeting. This meeting is about gaining team understanding and commitment tied to outcomes and shaping a plan to meet what buyers need today.
  • Sales VP, Marketing VP, sales and marketing teams– present findings and design a new sales process and list new sales tools needed. Conduct 3-4 sales trainings over 6-8 months and provide coaching as needed. This first meeting is about applying the work your team has committed to do and reinforcing new behaviors. This is a great team-building exercise to tear down any silos that have developed over the years. Following trainings are to reinforce new behaviors and coach team members through any difficulties they are experiencing.

The number and severity of the adjustments needed will depend upon the market and customer feedback as well as the senior management team’s prioritization; most teams learn a few opportunities, misperceptions of customers and make 2-5 strategic adjustments and add new sales tools. It is not unusual for teams to create a project roadmap with phase gates to tackle findings. You can have a senior manager lead the project internally or I have been hired to hold team members accountable to their assigned deliverables.

Once your team understands the voice of your market and the voice of your customers you have the foundation for a strong plan to hit your sales and profit numbers.

Does your team understand the voice of the customer?

Does your team clearly understand the voice of your market (s)?

Who owns the voice of the customer and market in your organization?

When was the last time you gathered this information?

Are you sure your brand is in sync with your customer expectations?

How often do you feel you need to gather this information?

Market-leading organizations achieve their sales and profit goals on a consistent basis.

They accomplish this by spending time understanding how buyers buy, what they need to buy, and why they don’t buy.

They take current market data and adjust their plans to better serve their current buyers and markets.

Would your team like to realize a 10X sales increase over the next 6 -8 years, and or a $38 million sales increase in 18 months like the companies I have shared recently? If so, it involves capturing the voice of your customers and the voice of your markets which is a key part of the no smoke and mirrors process.

Leverage Customer Voice into “Explosive Sales Growth”

Understanding your customers and markets today is the first step in business development plans that result in explosive sales growth. In my last post, I shared an example of one company that took the time to understand its market and doubled its sales in 18 months. In this post, I will share the same process and how critical it is to understand who your real customer is.

After the plastics company in the last post was sold to a private equity firm for a multiple much higher than industry averages I needed to find a new team to serve.

A company contacted me: Vantage Mobility. This company manufactures vans with the floors lowered so consumers in wheelchairs can drive again. This was one of my favorite jobs because we were changing lives with each sale.

When I met with their owners I heard common pains they wanted to be solved:

  • Increased distribution
  • Increase sales
  • Increase market share
  • Improve bottom line

After joining the team as the VP of Sales and Marketing I set out to use the same process that helped Alpha Enterprises realize explosive sales growth:

Go out into the market and meet customers

Listen for problems that needed solving

Understand how they buy today

What they need to buy today

Then shape a sales process that mirrors what we learned, train and coach the sales team on how to use it

The leadership team said their customers were independent mobility dealers who bought their vehicles then sold them to consumers in wheelchairs. What I heard was: mobility dealers were their channel distribution partners but the customers are consumers in wheelchairs. This led to some … let’s say lively discussions with the new guy “who obviously did not understand the dealer is the customer because they send us checks!”

My first objective was to add distribution in markets we were not adequately represented. I conducted a number of four-legged sales calls with my regional sales managers calling on our independent dealer distributors and the dealers we wanted to add. While my regional managers were focused on hitting their sales numbers (as they should) I asked open-ended questions to learn more about their business, how they buy, what they buy, and why today. They openly shared why they bought from the 800 lb gorilla competitor: Braun. Braun pretty much invented this industry. Their founder set out to solve a problem: help consumers in wheelchairs drive again. Because he was in a wheelchair himself, he intimately understood the needs of consumers in wheelchairs.

One of the questions I always use that produce great feedback is:

What does our competitor do really well?

This will produce items that are important to your buyers and key criteria they consider when picking a vendor. What buyers often expect is a competing salesperson talking about how the competitor sucks. (We had a few regional managers who used this approach and that was quickly changed). What salespeople must understand is when you use the approach of “the competition sucks” you are basically telling the buyer there is a fool for the buying decisions they make and really do not know how to do their job. Once this occurs the opportunity to build a relationship with the buyer is over. Once this occurs the opportunity to learn what is important to the buyer and how they buy is over.

Another question I always use is:

If you were the president of our company, what would you do?

In this case, you are doing the opposite of challenging the buyers’ past purchase decisions. You are basically saying…you have been in this business for a while, you are smart, I respect you and I really would like to hear your thoughts because I believe they will help me…

After about three months we gathered all the information, grouped it and we prioritized it, and offered what we heard the independent dealers wanted and needed. We trained our regional managers on how to present our offerings. I worked in the field with our salespeople making sure they adapted to this new behavior and coached them when they struggled. Our number of distributors increased. This led to increased sales and an improved bottom line.

However, to solve the companies next three pain points we really needed to understand the true customers: consumers in wheelchairs. (In tech markets we refer to them as end-users)

  • Increase sales
  • Increase market share
  • Improve bottom line

I continued the four-legged sales calls with our regional managers and coaching but changed my focus. Every mobility dealer sold accessible vans. They also provided amazing service for those vehicles and additional products to make the vehicle overall use experience the best it could be. They added innovative products like hand controls and transfer seats as well as conducted routine maintenance. While our regional managers were calling on mobility dealer owners and helping their salespeople demonstrate vehicles, I sat in the lobby and talked to consumers in wheelchairs. I was amazed how little I knew, how little my regional managers knew, about consumers in wheelchairs and how they made buying decisions and the process they went through. They shared things like:

  • On average consumers in wheelchairs make about 25% less than those not in wheelchairs and have less disposable income due to medications and medical devices. “It’s hard for us to get new car loans, and these custom vehicles are expensive
  • The vehicle’s reputation for quality is critical. Specifically, their fear was that should their vehicle break down, the tow truck driver can town their vehicle, but no tow trucks are equipped to transport a consumer in a wheelchair so they could be left in their wheelchair on the side of the road.
  • The closest relationships they have at mobility dealers are with the people who service their vehicles. “If Frank tells me brand X is the best because they rarely come in for service then that’s what I buy.”
  • How vehicle presentations at their home are so valuable for first-time mobility vehicle buyers (they may not have any way of getting to the dealer after their recent operation or accident)
  • One young lady said something that I did not expect: You think consumers in wheelchairs are ugly! What? Your brochure, your website all uses models who are obviously not people in wheelchairs…I can tell by this woman’s muscle tone in her thighs or this guy here the muscle tone in his legs and the bottom of his shoes are scuffed. (Never expected that concern)
  • We learned that all consumers in wheelchairs were not the same. We had four prominent buyer personas: Quadriplegics, paraplegics, some but limited mobility, and caregivers. Each had his or her unique criteria and requirements when purchasing a mobility vehicle or device.
  • My favorite comment came from a veteran who has had his vehicle serviced at our Akron Ohio dealer’s location: “You folks are not that smart you know? These vehicles are so very expensive when you buy a new van then convert it. If I were you I would buy as many used vans as I could and modify them and bring down the retail price so more people who need what you are selling can afford one…” ( as the new guy why wouldn’t we do this?) 
  • We learned a number of our dealer salespeople came from the automotive sales industry and the strategies and tactics they were taught there not only did not work but caused consumers to leave the mobility dealerships. The mobility vehicle sale is a custom solution sale not selling numbers or as one referred to it as “moving iron”. This sale is about serving people with a life-changing solution.

We brought all the current market data we gathered back to the owners, board, and executive team. This is the hardest part of my process because I am often seen as a heretic, not loyal, telling them their baby is ugly, or I just don’t get the vision, you obviously don’t know how we have been doing things around here for the past ___years. (Well if what you have been doing was driving the sales growth you needed you wouldn’t have hired me? ..never said out loud)

Over time we made some adjustments based on what we learned:

  • We used actual VMI customers in our photoshoots creating an authentic connection in the community in our brochures, marketing, and website
  • Our tech services group dug deep into the most common service issues and solved them with engineering’s help, and our dealer’s field tech teams became raving fans
  • We proactively offered in-home demonstrations when we learned it was a first-time buyer
  • We taught our dealers to proactively reach out to every past customer right before their vehicle warrantee was about to expire because consumers valued having the warrantee so much, and it created an inventory of used vans
  • We changed our website. The first step when you entered our site was to identify what buyer persona you were and we took you through products that met your needs and requirements.
  • We started buying fleets of used vans from rental companies and converting them driving down the retail price and binging an entirely new set of buyers into our dealers
  • Our dealer tech training did an amazing job and won the hearts and minds of dealer service technicians, one of the leading influencers for consumers in wheelchairs buying their next vehicle
  • We created and trained our dealers in a new way to help consumers in wheelchairs buy mobility vehicles. It was called the Certified Mobility Consultant program and it is still in use today

Vantage Mobility experienced “explosive sales growth “after tuning in to their distributor partner’s needs and the unique needs of their top buyer personas. We stopped focusing on what the 800 lb gorilla competitor was doing and we started tracking “lives changed” instead of vehicles sold.

Today VMI is seen as a high-quality conversion van manufacturer and key partner with their dealers. Used van conversions grew to over 60% of the vehicles sold within five years. Because they are a privately held company when I served them ( recently sold at a strong multiple ) I cannot share the specific sales and profits, but I can share their sales today are estimated at 9X-10X the sales they had in 2000. They continued to listen to their dealers and consumers and converted new vehicles like Hondas and Toyotas.

How about your company?

Are you actively listening to your channel partners AND customers?

Are you counting on your distributors to share customer feedback with you? Or is someone on your team asking?

When was the last time you asked one of your customers what your competitor is doing right?

Is your team experiencing explosive sales growth? Would you like to? 

What do your customers need to buy today and what process, what journey are they using to make buying decisions today?

Are you interested in 9X or 10X sales growth?

Once your team understands your buyers and sometimes channel partners, what they need to buy, and how they buy you can leverage this into an explosive sales growth business development plan like VMI executed.

There is a power in the voice of your customers, voice of your markets, leverage it!

A number of companies tell me they know their customers, we have been serving them for 20 years….you might but don’t you want to be sure?

OK, let me ask you a question: When you buy something today, has the journey you take to the sale changed in the last 10 years? Are there new criteria important to you today that might not have been on your list 20 years ago? The reason why your business exists today is you intimately knew your buyers, how they buy, and what they needed to buy back then. Just as you now may use the Internet today to do research before you buy something today, so too are your customers. I am not trying to be a Heretic, I am working hard to serve your company and help you grow profitably!

Once we leverage the voice of the market today you will experience explosive sales growth!

Fix Sales Problems With The Power in the  “Voice of the Customer”

In my last post, I shared how market-leading organizations provide their sales teams with a repeatable sales process with tools that resonate with their buyers. Understanding the voice of your customers has power. Why do your buyers buy? Why don’t they buy? What process do they use on their buying journey? What criteria must your buyers have to make a buying decision today? Once you have this information you can design a business development plan that creates explosive sales. In this post, I will share an example of a company that grew $38 million in 18 months using the voice of the customer.

In the 1990’s I was the VP of sales and marketing for Alpha Enterprises Inc. We were a plastics injection molding company that provided plastic packaging and mechanical security devices for the music retail industry.

In the mid-1990s the music industry experienced a significant shift in how music on compact discs was going to be distributed. Prior to this time music on compact discs was distributed to music stores and other mass merchants in a 12” cardboard package. This cardboard package was designed to be easily merchandised in what were once record album fixtures. Secondly, it added size to prevent and or slow down retail theft. Alpha Enterprises manufactures mechanical security devices in plastic for audiotapes and videos at the time. We had a design for a compact disc package, but we had very little sales.

Recognizing this large shift in how compact disc music was going to be distributed, we hit the road meeting with as many music retailers, mass merchants, and other companies that provided music to locations like book stores and so on. Our competitor also had a security package design and did a mass mailing to all of the retail stores with a product sample, prices, and asking for a commitment. We met with music companies like Sony, music retail accounts like Music Land and Tran world Music. We met with mass merchants, bookstores, warehouse clubs, and other retailers that sold music. In these meetings, we were capturing the voice of the customer and the voice of the market.

In our meetings we discovered a number of people in each organization that influenced the purchase of mechanical security products:

Merchandising

Loss prevention

Store design

Purchasing

Operations (specific to companies to provide music to stores and they used automated machines that loaded the compact discs into packaging)

We met with purchasing at each of the accounts we identified that could use our help due to this big shift, but also all the other people who helped influenced the purchases.

We found each influencer was also primarily concerned with theft since compact discs could easily be hidden in someone’s clothing. We also found each influencer had specific requirements and criteria they were looking for pain and problems they needed to solve.

For example:

Merchandising – ability to use current fixtures, new market entering music retail at the time were bookstores. They required a package as small as possible but protected the security tag from being removed by a consumer.

Loss prevention – reduce theft, re-use security tags, the speed at check out

Store design – maximum inventory in the smallest footprint, customer flow, particularly speed at check out

Purchasing – availability, a supplier that could guarantee to meet their volume needs and grow as their inventory grew. Devices that could use the current keys to unlock audiotapes at check out. The material the product was made of, for example, mass retailers wanted consumers to take the package home and cut it to remove the music disc where music retail wanted a durable and reusable package. Price, the price was important, however, the biggest pain point buyers had was the promise of availability.

We took all these requirements back to our engineering team and decided the best way to serve the voice of the markets we heard was to design and develop three security products based on the market and customer’s requirements.

When our competitor mass-mailed a sample and a cover letter bound with a rubber band ( really I saw it on buyers” desks), we spent the time clearly understanding the pain this market shift would cause. We segmented customer types by similar pain and requirements. We designed and manufactured three unique products with specific sizes, materials, and locking mechanisms. We added a compartment in our devices to house a security tag. We even went as far as to create an Excel tool that calculated how many retail transactions needed to occur and reuse the security tags so the reuse of tags paid for our devices. When buyers challenges our prices, and they did particularly one device made of Lexan, we asked them to complete the Excel sales tool to use with their supervisors and owners to show how the devices would be free after so many retail transactions.

There is power in capturing the voice of your customer and the voice of your market.

Most companies launch with what I refer to as mullet marketing. They “think” they know what the customers want and need, and how they buy, what they need to buy today…and they launch. About six months into the launch and the CEO is asking why sales is failing to execute the sales plan, they decide to do market research and find out why. Our competitors in this example did the same thing. They thought they knew the market since they served it for over 10 years. They thought they knew how their buyers would react and how their buyers would buy. They failed to ask; they failed to do the market work gathering the voice of the customer, the voice of the market. After we secured each key customer that matched our ideal customer profiles, we heard our competitors were asking for meetings to understand why they lost the sale and determine what they could do to possibly win the orders. The trouble was, since the top pain of purchasing was a guarantee of orders shipping on time, we had all the key accounts tied to a multi-year purchase commitment.

What was the result of gathering the “Voice of the customer”?

What was the sales growth impact from gathering the “Voice of the market”?

What impact did the “voice of the customer” have on our bottom line?

We experienced a $38 million dollar sales increase in 18 months!

We sold our products at a market competitive price but we were not the cheapest.

Two of the new products we designed resulted in gross sales margins exceeding 55%. (Unheard of in the plastics market at the time)

Did we see any other unforeseen benefits of the voice of customer work?

  • We established strong relationships of trust with leading US retailers that eventually led to our launch of a line of consumer storage products that grew to over $69 million in 5 years. The accounts knew us, trusted our ability to execute.
  • We started receiving international inquires for our new product designs and this led to an international product expansion and additional revenues
  • The video game industry was watching and eventually approached us for security packages for video games and software games resulting in additional sales revenues

This is just one example of the explosive sales power when you understand what your buyers want, how they buy, and what they need to buy today. I emphasize “today” because how buyers buy and the criteria they use to buy change as your market changes.

So how about your company….

Do you understand the voice of your customers today? Are you Sure?

Recognizing in most companies your customers represent about 30% of your market….

Do you understand “the voice of your market” today?

Is someone on your team asking questions and listening for buyer pain? Who?

What impact would an incremental $38 million have on your bottom line at over 55% margins?

What sifts are your markets experiencing right now?

Capturing the voice of your customers and the voice of your market is a powerful tool that many companies fail to utilize. The voice of the market becomes the foundation for your business development and new product development plans and strategies.

Without a current understanding of how your buyers buy and what they need to buy, your sales will not reach the explosive sales growth they could.

One last question… let’s say I have not sold you on investing time and resources into understanding the voice of your customers and markets….

What if your largest competitor is doing this process right now?

If so you are about 24-36 months away from a sales and profits death spiral many companies never recover from.

PLEASE take the time and dedicate the resources to clearly understanding what your buyers want and need to buy today and the process they use. Once you do.

PLEASE create a repeatable sales process that mirrors what your buyers want and need to buy today.

That is the No Smoke and Mirrors process I have used for over 30 years and it has always driven profitable sales growth.

Do not “sell” buyers I help them buy!

Fix Sales: Knowing Buyer’s Journey is like Creating a GPS for Your Sales Process

The quickest path to creating a repeatable sales process that drives sales growth is understanding the journey your buyers take today. How do your buyers buy? Why do they buy? Why don’t they buy? What do buyers in your market need to have to make a buying decision today? Once we have answers to these questions we can create a repeatable sales process that drives profitable sales growth. A sales process that mirrors how your buyers want to buy becomes a GPS for your salespeople.

I was asked to speak at an event for business owners and leaders. I prefer interactive discussions so I asked the room what problems they would like to solve? We wrote problems on the whiteboard then consolidated the list.

What we agreed as the top three problems these business owners wanted to solve were:

  • Finding and hiring good talent
  • How do we get found on the internet
  • Making sales more predictable and efficient

We agreed I would share my advice for solving business problem #3: Making sales more predictable and efficient because this is a topic I have experience solving. In this post, I will share the advice for creating a powerful repeatable sales process that drives sales results.

I asked the business owners and leaders to share how this problem is seen and felt in their organizations

  • Financial results
  • Service experience
  • Overall buying experience
  • Turnover –customers and employees
  • Margin loss – in an effort to serve the customer we run overtime, we purchase expedited freight, our cost of inventory is too high
  • Sales decline
  • Morale decline – throughout the organization
  • Brand damage

This group was really sharing some great ideas and the above we agreed were the top 8 ways not having a market-driven repeatable sales process hurts their business.

Next, I asked what one thing could we do that would make this entire list go away? (This question came from one of my favorite books: The Power of One Thing)

The room grew very quiet.

So I asked a simple question:

How do I get to the airport after this meeting is over?

One gentleman started with directions: turn left out of the parking lot, at the second light turns right. Stay on that road until it dead-ends and take a left, merge onto the highway and drive North for about 11 miles and look for the airport sign. Exit the highway on the left and follow the signs to the airport and car rental return.

A young lady said I would not send him that way, …and she proceeded to list a series of turns and it had me on the highway much sooner with fewer turns.

The last person first asked me a question: What time of day will you be driving? If it is between 4 pm and 6 pm you want to stay off the highway and proceeded to give me a very lengthy and complicated series of directions.

I then challenged the room: Why did you all assume I wanted directions from here?

I went on to share how this is the most common problem we have when trying to sell current customers as well as new customers…we assume where the buyer is starting from. After they challenged me that this was not fair we moved on.

I pointed to the maps I drew of each of the directions I was provided with all the turns and so on.

This one, the one with the least amount of turns and steps is what it’s like to sell a current customer. They already know you, your company, they have some level of trust and they have a logical series of steps they use to buy, and criteria they need to have to make a buying decision. As you can see it has many fewer steps and is hard to get lost.

On the other end of the scale is the direction that did not have me using the highway. This had the most steps, turns, and twists to get me to my final destination. This has the highest probability of me getting lost. This is what it is like selling a new customer who has never done business with your company before, never heard of your company before. You will have many steps the buyer will use to build trust. Some of them may feel odd to you. Depending on the study you read, buyers today are completing between 53% and 70%b of their buying journey BEFORE they speak with one of your salespeople. We must know what they are doing!

The last direction resembles selling a current customer a new product or service. The number of steps the buyer takes is more than the short journey but less than a buyer who never heard of you before. They trust you and your company but must be assured this new product or service will completely solve their problem.

Not knowing how your buyers buy and what they need to have to make buying decisions today is a sales sin. (Note sin means “missing the mark”)

It is second only to asking your salespeople to achieve sales growth goals with a dated value proposition that no longer resonates with buyers.

I went on to share your business has common buyers we need to group into buyer personas. Once we do we need to understand how each of these buyers buys and what they need to buy when in the buying process. The more you understand about each of your key buyer personas the more your repeatable sales process and the tools your salespeople are presenting at just the right time will connect.

Eventually, an older distinguished gentleman in the third row said: OK I see where this is interesting and important but how? How do you map this process and gather so much information?

Keeping with the spirit of the power of one thing I answered: ASK!

I shared the process I use to interview current customers, customers you lost and potential customers my clients have always wanted to sell. I shared my top 10 questions I use that work in every industry. The only people you do not interview are those currently in the quote process.

roundabout-39394_1280

What I asked everyone to do is ask the open-ended questions and listen, really listen. What you need to listen for is any place in the buying process the buyer enters a roundabout and goes round and round not making a decision. Listen for any time the journey slows down. . Red lights, if you will, in our driving example. What criteria does the buyer need to have and when? This is like me looking for the airport sign on the highway with enough time to still change lanes. Listen for any road construction that has changed how they buy in the last few months causing them to detour from their old buying process.

I closed our discussion with:

The best way to make your repeatable sales process effective and efficient is taking the time to understand your buyers, the process they are using and the criteria they need, and when in today’s market.

Put another way….

“Knowing your Buyer’s Journey is like creating a GPS for your Sales Process.”

– Mark Allen Roberts

Your salespeople’s and marketing’s activities will mirror how your buyers want to buy and provide buyers the tools they need at just the right time in the buying journey to close more sales. When I used this process with a  company their sales to close % increased over 20 % and we added over 250 new customers in the last 18 months… (but I am getting ahead of myself as that is my next post)

How about your company?

Do you have a repeatable sales process? Are you sure?

How is it working? Are you hitting your sales numbers?

Does someone on your team clearly understand how your buyers are buying today? Who? 

Does your team clearly understand what your buyers need to buy and when?

strong>How effective is your team’s sales process?

How efficient is your team’s sales process?

Does your team know when a buyer is entering a roundabout, and what to do to get them back on the buying journey?

Is your team showing any or all of the above symptoms of not having a defined repeatable sales process?

Could your buyers be taking a detour while your salespeople keep selling the same way and unaware?

The markets we serve are dynamic. We must tune into how buyers buy and what they need to buy today. Market shifts and other changes happen all the time that can cause sales growth to stall. Market leaders are constantly asking their markets how they buy and what they need to buy. Leaders identify detours early and adjust.

In my next two posts, I will share examples of how adjustments to the sales process and adding new tools resulted in increased sales results and lowering the cost of sales.

Are you sure you need to hire “more” salespeople?

Many businesses are as busy or busier than they were pre-pandemic.
My clients share they want to hire more salespeople to keep up with demand and give their current customers the best buying experience possible.

What I often ask my clients often surprises them: Are you sure you need more salespeople?

Having led a number of sales teams over the past 36 years and now provide sales consulting, training, and coaching I have experienced some interesting trends, data points if you will.

In most sales teams I serve 20%-30% of the people in a customer-facing quota carrying sales roles should not be in sales.

Another 34% of salespeople are in the wrong roles based on their skills, beliefs, and motivations.

Salespeople today are spending less than 20% of their sellable time selling.

Over 50% of salespeople have not received any formal sales skills training.

25%-30% of sales teams have not updated their sales structure in over 12 months.

Buyers shared in a recent survey in a typical one-hour meeting with a salesperson only 6 minutes were actually valuable to them, the buyer.

So, let me ask you again…Are you sure you need more salespeople?

Or do you need to improve the overall effectiveness of your current sales team?

Before you invest in more salespeople, I suggest the following to ensure your current sales team is as effective and efficient as they could be.

I.Assess sales skills

Conduct a sales skills assessment to determine the current state of your salespeople by sales role.

Do you have Hunters, Farmers, and Fishermen?

Do you have the right people in the right roles?

Do your people have the right skills, motivations, and beliefs for the role there are in?

II. Train and Coach

Prescribe training and coaching to fill any skills gaps discovered in the assessment.

III. Measure what Matters

Establish key performance indicators that drive the results you want and need. Far too many teams are tracking lagging indicators alone like sales and profit per sale.

The teams I work with track indicators like:

New client contacts attempted

New client conversations completed

Future meetings booked

Quotes presented

Close rates on quotes

IV. Reinforce Accountability to goals

Develop and manage a sales accountability process.

So, one more time, let me ask you the question: Are you sure you need more salespeople?

Or would you first like to understand how effective your current sales team is and determine how effective they could be with training and coaching?

If you have done all of the above and determine you need more salespeople, I can help you find top sales performers to add to your organization.

If improving sales team effectiveness is something you would like to learn more about let’s schedule a call.

 

 

One Data Point Most Sales Teams Miss When Restructuring the Sales Organization

In an earlier post, I shared insights from an excellent article published in Harvard Business Publications. Why this article was timely and needed is several CEOs and CFO’s as well as business owners are all having discussions on how to reduce costs, improve profits, grow market share, and structure our sales organization for the future.

I shared a tool to help business leaders consider much more than revenue by the salesperson when rightsizing and retooling their sales teams in my last post. There is one critical data point everyone must consider in addition when reorganizing and restructuring sales organizations but sadly most will not.

In this post, I will share what this last piece of critical information is you must capture to strategically pivot, reset, retool and reorganize your sales organization to survive today and thrive post-Covid-19.

As I work with business leaders they are frustrated and often anxious about the future of their business.

If you have been in business for a while like me, you have lived through economic disruption and challenges. You adjusted and survived in 2008 and the stock market volatility. You may have seen some revenue disruption after 911 but your team adjusted and grew through those challenges.

What makes this current disruption so unique and hard to navigate?

Covid -19 was not a single event we experienced and worked through. It is an ongoing event with new information daily. Not all businesses have been impacted the same. Some businesses have seen little disruption, some have experienced an increase in revenue and many have seen orders drop off 30% or more. Many businesses are dealing with canceled orders they built products for, customers having difficulty paying their bills on time not to mention the emotional toll this crisis has had on employees, their families, and coworkers.

We adapted with virtual selling, and Zoom calls became the norm for many once outside sales professionals.

Salespeople are using this time to upskill and adjust how they serve their customers by leading with empathy and improving our active listening skills to truly understand how our customers are dealing with this crisis, how have their businesses been impacted and how can we best serve them today?

As I shared in my last post teams are gathering data as fast as they can and searching for trends to develop scenarios and identifying specific trigger events that will activate their future plans.

Teams are pouring over KPI data-hungry for insights to develop plans and lead their teams through this disruptive market condition. The trouble is many leaders have a vision looking at lagging indicators and need to have a much broader and creative view of this situation to develop the right strategic plans for the future.

As I alluded to in my last post there is one major data point I always consider when retooling and reorganizing sales most teams most leaders are not considering.

What is this elusive data point most teams are failing to consider?

Your customer’s voice!

Now is the time to intimately understand your customers and be able to answer questions like:

Why do customers buy from you?

Why don’t customers buy from you?

What do your customers consider your value proposition to be today?

How are your buyers buying?

Has your buyers’ buying journey changed in the last 30 days?

Do your buyers have new buying criteria they did not have 30 days ago?

What do your buyers want and expect today?

What are you doing today they no longer value but are adding to your cost to serve?

In a Harvard article titled: The Most Important Metric You are not Tracking Yet, the author shares how most organizations consider themselves to be customer-centric, but they are failing to take into consideration how their customers’ needs and expectations have changed since Covid.

Many teams again are pouring over inward-facing KPI’s looking for insights, but they are failing to understand CPI’s.

What’s a CPI?

A CPI is Customer Performance Indicators.

The author shares there are two elements for something to be a CPI:

  1. Outcomes customers say are important to them
  2. Outcomes are measures in increments important to the customer

What are some increments that are important to customers?

  • Time
  • Convenience
  • Options
  • Dollars Saved
  • Value Delivered

Many people think CPI’s are the same as your Net Promoter Score. Your NPS is one of your KPI’s and measures if someone would recommend, refer others to do business with you. NPS unlike a CPI however does not provide the connection to single intended customer outcomes.

Who in your organization might value a current CPI?

  • Marketing – how customers are buying, where are they shopping? How they are making buying decisions? What are their exit criteria today?
  • Sales– what do buyers want and need from salespeople today? What are their expectations on services like the speed of quote, minimum order quantities, terms, returns…?
  • Product Management– understanding product use cases and identifying if product requirements have changed
  • Customer Service – customer expectations on metrics like first-time issue resolution, ease of accessing someone, ability to resolve issues quickly and completely
  • Operations – customer expectations with regards to order accuracy, turnaround time, shipping orders complete?
  • Finance – tracking and reporting the value you have provided the customer with your product or solution

To make strategic decisions in such a volatile and uncertain business climate we need to consider various sets of data, not emotion.

We not only need to gather internal data and customer voice insights but we also need to do so quickly because in many cases if it takes you months to gather the information it will be too late by the time you try to use it.

Companies that will survive and thrive post-Covid -19 will gather data quickly, capture the voice of their customers and establish current CPI’s then assess their sales and other teams on their ability to deliver to the customer’s stated needs and expectations.

Sales organizations that will not only survive but become market leaders post Covid-19 will gather data quickly accessing many data points and develop strategic plans for today and post-Covid -19. They will be Agile and adapt and often pivot long before their competitors in fear mode making decisions based on emotion.

It’s time to gather your internal and customer voice data to help your team develop your strategic plans to weather the unpredictable market conditions and come out stronger and more effective when it passes.

My goal in this post was to coach everyone to find the voice of their customers today when shaping their sales and service organizations for today and the future.

Leveraging data coupled with the voice of your customer feedback is a proven no smoke and mirrors process I have used for over 30 years to help organizations experience explosive sales and profit growth.

If you would prefer my help providing unfiltered, unbiased data in let’s schedule a call and I would be honored to serve your team and position your team to become stronger today and a market leader in the future.

Need to Improve Revenue? Run a MRI on Your Business Today

By Mark Allen Roberts

When I ask CEO’s and Sales leaders: “how do you plan to end 2020 strong and hit the ground running in 2021?”…I receive a variety of responses. Some have plans and specific strategies and tactics but the majority are more focused on this month and this quarter.

I spoke at the NAW event in Washington DC last year before the pandemic and asked a room of CEO’s and business leaders to raise your hand if you felt with 100% certainty your sales organization has the skills to hit your sales and profit objectives in 2020…. not one hand was raised. This was concerning but not surprising.

I have helped organization improve their sales and deliver more shareholder value for over 30 years.

CEO’s and CFO’s have always expressed a concern that sales are more of a dark art than a science.

For years I have heard: Why can’t sales run more like my plant with systems, processes and deliver predictable results?

In this post we will discuss how to run an MRI for your business now and strategically pivot and lean into the data to structure, train and coach your sales team to drive the outcomes leaders desire.

You have a smart team and with good, up to date data you can build strategies that deliver the results you want and need.

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 teams I have served were experiencing small symptoms of problems but needed to dive deeper to find the root causes and heal them.

Many CEO’s and sales leaders I speak with have issues just below the surface in their businesses that need a business health MRI to identify them.

Let me ask you a few questions:

What if we could provide a data driven scan for the health of your business today?

What if this scan could predict your business’s future health if things remained the same?

What if we used a scan of your businesses health today that could help us prevent your business having a stroke and or going out of business in the future?

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

For over 35 years of my career I was hired to “fix sales problems”. The first thing I would do with each client is gathering and assessing data from various parts of the business and your markets and determines the organizations’ overall health.

Organizations have strong leaders and senior leaderships teams who if they had unbiased, unfiltered data can and will create short term and long term plans to adjust to current market constraints.

 This process has been the same with each team I have served and I believe it is more critical now than ever given the change so many of us have experienced.

Could common sales clots be forming in your pipeline today that will cause a sales and or profit stroke in your business or worse?

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

I would suggest seven areas of your organization to scan to give your leadership the data they need.

Voice of your customers

Here we capture things like how your buyers buy and why they buy from you and why they don’t. What is your net promoter score? Capture how your buyers are buying today and what criteria they need to make a buying decision. We spend time understanding your customer’s business and their economic drivers as well as whom their customers are.

Systems and Processes

Does the team have a Sales Plan?  Do you have a formal Sales Process that is buyer centric? Are the systems in place to support profitable growth that provide salespeople valuable insights to prescriptively growing their business? Do you have a CRM and why or why not are sales using it? Do you have a strong sales support focus to ensure customers have a strong buying experience?

Marketing

Does the team have a strong digital marketing competence? (If not you must accelerate this now) I suggest running a value proposition audit to ensure you clearly understand what your buyer’s value after the last 90 days of disruption. Do you clearly understand the various buyer personas of your customers and decision makers and have you equipped sales with the right tools and messaging for each? How active is your website? Is your website found and does your site speak in the language of the channels you serve?

Sales support

Here we look at all the sales support tools ,systems and processes to ensure they are aligned to drive profitable sales growth while making it easy for customers to buy from you. Do you have a sales enablement function? If not who is responsible for helping sales improve their success? Does sales have the right tools for each stage of the sales process? Does your sales process mirror your buyers buying process today or is it out-dated? When we look at sales support we also look at the skills of sales management and sales leaders. Have they been trained in the new skills to grow from rep to manager? Do sales managers know how to coach? Do they want to coach and more importantly how effective is their sales coaching?

Sales Mindset

We want to determine things like what do your salespeople believe about things like: pricing, quality, selling, business outlook, accountability and motivation? Ultimately we are determining if your sales team knows how to sell and will they sell? Do they have a high emotional intelligence and empathy? Is their focus to produce value for their customers as trusted advisors or are they commission junkies just focused on their goals?

Sales Skills

The main focus here is to determine by salesperson and sales manager if they have been trained and do they have the sales skills needed in your market of today? Do they understand how to sell based on value and not just price? Do they feel comfortable asking strong qualifying and discovery questions to get to the root of the buyer problems? Do the sales people know how to negotiate and close? Can they shape their conversation style based on the personality of the buyer? Are they comfortable creating a business case and talking about money? Do they know how to have insightful conversations with various influencers all the way up to the CEO? Are the right people based on skills and mindset in the right roles?

Metrics and Data

Here we dive into the data often buried deep in your servers and CRM. We look at things like on boarding new sales associates and time to revenue. We review KPI’s (leading and lagging indicators) and are they the right ones for the business today and in the future, by sales role. Naturally we look at sales, profits by salesperson, by customer and by channel. What is the cost of sales? Cost per lead? What is your net profit by customer today? What is our close rate average and by team member? What is our market share and share of each key customers’ wallet? What were our planned and unplanned sales associate turnover in the last 24 months? Does your team have a strategic pricing system or just a common margin for all products and services?

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

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 and connect the dots between your current state today and where your team desires to be in the future.

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.”

My challenge is if not now when?

If you have been following any of my articles or attending my webinars there is a powerful sales effectiveness instrument and data gathering process to gather the above.

We leverage technology to gain the insights we need to shape a healthy strategic business plan for the future.

If you want to DIY your business health assessment have at it. Many teams will try to gather everything they need but find themselves distracted by today’s challenges and the flaming trashcan of today.

Another challenge to doing this data gathering yourself is 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.

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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 person, process and system.

Culture 

When we assess a culture we look for things like: Is the culture innovative or are they defensive and protecting the fort? What is the team’s comfort with change? Do the senior leaders have a fixed mindset…” the way we have always done things around here”…or open to new ideas and a growth mindset? How is the organization structured? Do they have business silos? What is their decision making process? Do they have a continuous learning culture? We need to understand any deep biases early and introduce data before we begin developing our business health plan. 

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

There is a tremendous value of hiring an outside heretic when it comes to adding value to your bottom line. They gather the data and share it without a filter and politically correct biases.

“Smart experienced teams when presented unfiltered data make strong strategic sales and profit plans.”

– Mark Allen Roberts

If you want help running an MRI for your business now and have the data to make strategic pivots let’s chat.

Healthy businesses will survive now and thrive in the years to come!

How to Make Tough Sales Structure Decisions?

By Mark Allen Roberts

 

Many business owners and CEO’s are trying to determine the best strategic adjustments they need to make now and post Covid-19. Some leaders talk about surviving right now, keeping their head above water, not needing to close locations and so on. Many share it is difficult to develop a plan with so much uncertainty and chaos.

 

A select few leaders however are focused on not just surviving but thriving after Covid-19. For those of you who wish to use this current time to retool and reorganize your sales team to meet buyer needs today and in the future, Harvard Business Review published an excellent article: Right Personnel Decisions Now to Thrive After the Crisis.

 

In this post I will share some of the insights from the article and discuss how to position your business now to thrive after Covid-19.

 

The article starts, and rightfully so, reminding us cash is king in such challenging and turbulent times. Leaders must review the data they have today, conduct scenario simulations and make strategic decisions to improve your cash position. This topic of improving your cash position is a topic I am confident many thought leaders are writing about and I will not discuss this in this post.

 

Why this timely article captured my attention is the author does an excellent job of sharing how to make strategic decisions about your people.

 

The author shares there are basically 4 categories of people decisions

 

Repurposing

 

Identify what parts of your business are slow or have stopped completely and how can you repurpose the people that support those areas to new areas to add value today.

 

For example most sales teams have salespeople who are outside salespeople. Their typical week involves traveling and meeting with their customers and helping them solve problems. In many states these salespeople are being repurposed to inside virtual sales roles. The difficulty some teams are experiencing is we have found only 41% of salespeople today have the skills, discipline and mindset to work remotely.

 

If you find yourself having outside salespeople working virtually you may wish to assess their virtual selling skills and provide training for any skills gaps you discover.

 

My prediction is many sales teams will reorganize to leverage the productivity of an inside sales model once we emerge from Covid-19. Many the CFO’s I speak with are sharing they are seeing a drop in top line sales but an even more significant drop in sales expense. They will be challenging sales leaders to ensure the sales organization of the future maximizes the return on sales expense and explore more virtual sales in the future.

 

Engagement

 

Prior to Covid -19 many teams had concerns with employee engagement. Some studies shared as much as 65% of employees are not engaged and doing just enough to get by. This was costing organizations billions before Covid-19.

 

The author shares a key part of getting through a crisis is bringing your top performing team members with you and keeping them engaged.

 

Has your organization done an employee engagement research study?

 

What % of your team was not engaged?

 

What % of your team is not engaged today?

 

When it comes to salespeople we look for their engagement in their Sales DNA. This part of the assessment helps us discover their sales beliefs and motivations. On some teams I have worked with as high as 30% of the current team lack the will to sell. In other words they joined the sales team but lack the commitment, motivation and often sales skills to drive revenue growth. We need to consider engagement as we reorganize and retool our sales organizations for the future.

 

Learning, Retooling, Up skilling

 

As teams prepare to become more buyer centric they will often need additional training and up skilling for new roles. Many teams are currently assessing if they have the right salespeople in the right roles and if not what changes will need to be made.

 

As teams strategically use assessments, performance reviews and transaction data to identify the right person for the right roles, there will be a need for training.

 

One of the biggest pushback’s I have received from salespeople about training is: I don’t have the time. When we look at how salespeople spend their time, the average outside salesperson spending 15% of there sellable time traveling, and since they are not traveling now…they have the time. Let’s use this time wisely and prepare our salespeople with individualized learning plans that equip them to be successful in their current and or new roles.

 

The author reinforces the need to identify skills gaps now and use this time to close these gaps now.

 

Right Sizing

 

The hardest part of adjusting your organization to a shift of this magnitude is letting people go. Downsizing, furloughing, laying people off, eliminating their positions…whatever you call it is tough and very emotional. It is a leaders job to make the tough calls based on the best information they have today and very emotionally draining.

 

However as a leader its something we must do after exhausting all other strategies to protect our balance sheet today and in the future. Your mission is to make decisions to survive now and thrive when we come out of Covid-19.

 

Having been through market downturns over my past 36 years leading sales teams I know how difficult these decisions can be. Admittedly I have never led a team though something like Covid-19 with so much uncertainty.

 

My recommendation is take a data driven approach to making these tough decisions.

 

I can tell you how I’ve seen teams reorganize their sales teams the wrong way. I have seen some teams look strictly at their forced ranking performance reviews. They identify those associates who scored the lowest and target them for downsizing.

 

The trouble with this strategy alone is you may be letting some people go you should be saving or could save with additional training and sales coaching. What I have observed is forced ranking performance systems often give you the wrong data.

 

The leading problem I have observed is many performance systems are subjective based on opinion and not data. They become popularity contests and sales managers protect salespeople like them. They keep the easy sales reps who act and think like the manager and often these are not top performers when you study transaction data metrics like profit per sale, new business, and return on sales expense.

 

With 50% of salespeople today receiving no sales skills training it should not shock us to learn most sales managers have not been trained. Without training in how to motivate, lead and coach salespeople all they can do is compare how this salesperson behaves compared to the behaviors they did when they are a salesperson. Add that many sales managers today came up through the sales ranks before the internet, before social selling and even before cell phones in some cases, they are often judging your salespeople’s sales competencies based on an outdated sales process.

 

What is my suggestion to solving this complex sales team right sizing, re tooling problem?

 

Consider many data points and leverage data to make decisions not gut and intuition.

 

You need to answer the question: Do I have the right salespeople in the right roles? 

 

The author suggests you make sure and understand the unit economics before you lay anyone off or terminate their employment. She suggests a thorough evaluation by solution, market, and customer segment.

 

Another mistake I see teams’ make when the CEO tells the CFO I need $XXX, XXX in cuts. The CFO runs sales by salesperson descending report. The CFO and Sales VP look at the Excel spread sheet and draw the line. Everyone above the line stays and everyone below the line is laid off or let go permanently.

 

Although they are using data to make difficult decisions, this process is often not the best for the long-term health of your sales teams’ results.

 

Many times I have seen the top salesperson by revenue is not the most skilled salesperson on the sales team. Often this person is someone who has been on the team the longest and or manages some of the largest accounts they were given years ago. Although they may carry some of the largest revenue numbers they often have poor farming or hunting skills. They often lack business acumen to have business discussions with buyers to help them build a business case to fund the purchase investment.

 

If you are sold on just running an Excel report and drawing the line…let me ask you a question to consider.

 

Of the salespeople above the line, if you were asked to open and grow a new sales territory would you choose them?

 

When I have asked sales leaders and sometimes CFO’s this question I receive an uncomfortable…No.

 

This method of restructuring and retooling your sales team does not identify team and individual skills gaps and therefore does not help you close gaps to help your sales team become more efficient and effective after Covid-19.

 

Again a sales assessment that measures sales skills competencies, motivations and beliefs coupled with sales transaction data and past performance data is the best method to make these hard decisions.

 

I use a tool called a smart sizing tool that considers the following when restructuring and rightsizing sales teams when necessary :

 

Revenue

Pipeline health

Sales skills

Sales beliefs

Sales motivation

Performance to KPI’s last 12 months

Compensation

Consultative sales skills

Ability to work remotely, virtually

Value based sales verse selling on price

 

As Rebecca Hones shares in this excellent and timely article we have 4 categories of people decisions when we face a crisis like we are in today as we discussed above.

 

Some of the leaders I speak with that serve the food industry and medical supplies and safety products industries have not seen a decrease and some have experienced a slight sales increase in the last 30 days.

 

If your business has not been disrupted and or is actually increasing consider yourself blessed.

 

I suggest this is a good time for you to assess the skills, beliefs and motivations of your top sales performers and strategically use this data to recruit new salespeople that match the sales DNA of your top performers.

 

If you find yourself and your team needing to make the tough decisions and wantt help with a data driven tool that helps you explore various sales organization structure scenarios, please contact me. Leveraging the smart sizing tool we can get you the insights to make current and future sales structure decisions within one week.

 

There is one other critical data point market leading organizations need to consider when reorganizing and retooling their sales organization and most teams do not even have it on the list right now.

 

In my next post I will share this additional information to ensure your sales reorganization drives the maximum value for your team.

 

 

 

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