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Mark Allen Roberts

This author has written 571 articles

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.

The Critical Role of Sales Farmer

As sales organizations continue to adapt to new challenges what we often see is common sales roles emerge.

We have the Hunter who as the name implies is focused on new business, acquiring new clients to serve and increase your market share position.

We experienced a new role emerge, the fisherman, as we shared in a recent issue of Soar to Success. The fisherman is in direct responses to organizations investing heavily in digital marketing and customer engagement. Their primary role is to help “reel in” opportunities that nibble on marketing content and help guide them through the sales process and ultimately land them as a customer.

A role that seldom receives the praise deserved, given its critical role, is the famer.

In this article we will discuss the sales farmer role, the skills required to be a successful farmer and why sales organizations need hunters, fishermen and farmers today.

Farmers as the role implies are not out actively hunting for net new clients but they are constantly planting new seeds of opportunity at existing customers. They nurture and grow their current customers and continuously explore opportunities to win a greater share of wallet in existing accounts.

What skills are required today to be a successful sales farmer?

Data Analytics – Farmers today are data driven and leverage customer data to drive actionable insights for their clients. What products and services have seen a sales increase? What products and services have seen a decrease…and why? What products do other customers similar to this account buy that this customer has not bought?

Consultative Selling Skills – Farmers need to have the ability to ask great discovery questions that create commercial conversations that lead to new revenue. In addition to asking great questions they must be skilled in active listening. The difficulty most salespeople have is they listen to reply and not to learn. Farmers listen to learn and this gives them the ability to make suggestions their customers want to apply.

Business Acumen – Farmers must have the ability to speak with their customers in the language of business. They must have a clear understanding of their customers business and how their customer makes money. When farmers present new opportunities they must connect the dots between what they are selling and how it impacts their customers net income.

Strong Relationship Building Skills – Farmers have the ability to build strategic business relationships with their buyers and also all the sale influencers in their clients

Comfort Discussing Money – Farmers must have a comfort discussing money and as the opportunity size increases not have the drive to discount. Strong farmers create win-win business proposals based on value and not price.

If your sales team wants to make sure you have your hunters, farmers and fishermen in the right roles with the right skills let’s schedule a call.

Your Biggest Sales Bottle Neck to Growth May Surprise You

How do we profitably grow our sales? How do we build business development processes and systems that consistently deliver results?
If you are the leader of an organization and have asked yourself these questions you are not alone and if you are looking for answers this article is for you.

Many CEO’s business leaders and business owners are frustrated. They typically started their carriers in operations or finance. If you want to improve something you look at the data and make strategic adjustment and monitor the results.

However the business leaders I serve often share…

Why is sales so frustrating?

Why can’t sales run like my manufacturing facility?

Why can’t we have inputs that drive predictable results?

Why does sales feel like some dark art and I can’t ever seem to have predictable forecasts?

What I often find is this growing frustration is the result of two factors:

First, the sales team has never received the sales skills training to effectively and efficiently deliver results in their roles. They have strong product and applications knowledge but they have never been taught how to sell. (We will leave this topic for a future article)

Second, the biggest sales bottle neck to growth may surprise you… it is the number of meaningful conversations that sales is having that turn into revenue.

What salespeople are doing each day to find and secure conversations that could lead to revenue is an unknown to many business leaders.

With salespeople on average only selling 20% of their sellable time…how are they using this time?

So let me share some questions you need to know to close the new account sales performance gap once and for all.

  1. How many outbound sales calls are your sales hunters making each day?
  2. Are they targeting your ideal customer profile?
  3. What messaging are they using?
  4. Would you book an appointment with them
  5. Is the target list up to date with the correct contact information?
  6. How many outbound calls turn into future meetings?
  7. How many future meetings turn into opportunities?
  8. What is your close rate on opportunities?

In many ways sales is a science as I have shared in prior articles.

The number one bottleneck I am seeing today as a sales consultant, trainer and coach is salespeople are not having enough quality meaningful conversations that are turn into revenue.

If you want to improve your fresh revenue from new accounts sales start tracking the above.

Over 20% of organizations came out of the pandemic stronger than when they went into it. One of the most common factors I am seeing is those top performing organizations all invested in training and systems based on how their market was buying. They quickly identified bottlenecks and removed them.

If you need help identifying any sales bottlenecks preventing your team from winning new accounts let’s schedule a time to chat.

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