sales process | No Smoke and Mirrors

Understanding the Distinction: Voice of Customer Research vs. Sales Discovery and Qualifying

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In my recent book, I share how Voice of the Customer research gives teams the key insights to drive strategic business growth. Salespeople understanding customer needs and preferences is paramount for success. While both Voice of Customer (VoC) research and sales discovery and qualifying serve to gather insights about customers, they differ significantly in their approach, focus, skills and objectives.

Lately, I have contributed content on LinkedIn that needs clarification about salespeople conducting voice-of-customer research. In this article, we’ll explore the distinction between VoC research and sales discovery and qualifying and why salespeople should prioritize selling over conducting research.

Voice of Customer Research: Understanding Market Dynamics

Voice of Customer (VoC) research involves gathering feedback, insights, and opinions directly from customers to understand their preferences, expectations, and pain points. This research typically takes the form of surveys, interviews, focus groups, and observation methods and aims to provide a holistic understanding of the market landscape, customer needs, and competitive dynamics. We recommend that trained researchers conduct these interviews to gain unbiased insights into customers’ satisfaction, struggles, and why they buy from you.( and why they buy from your competitors)

Sales Discovery and Qualifying: Uncovering Specific Customer Needs

On the other hand, sales discovery and qualifying are integral components of the sales process that focus on uncovering specific customer needs, challenges, and priorities to tailor solutions and drive sales growth. Through targeted questioning, active listening, and needs analysis, sales professionals engage prospects in meaningful conversations to identify pain points, assess fit, build relationships and qualify leads based on their likelihood to purchase.

When a team has conducted VOC, we often discover three to five insight pillars and better understand current customer and market challenges. With these insights, we can develop strategic growth plans and marketing materials in the Voice of your customers and deliver the best buying experience.

As best-selling author Vern Harnish shares…

“ Developing strategy without customer insights is Criminal”

However I hear some skeptics saying why can’t sales do research and selling activities?

Why Salespeople Should Sell, Not Conduct Research:

1. Time Efficiency:

Salespeople are tasked with driving revenue and closing deals, making their time valuable. While VoC research is essential for informing broader marketing strategies and product development initiatives, salespeople should prioritize selling activities directly contributing to revenue generation.

Studies indicate salespeople are spending less than 25% of their sellable time selling today as it is.

We want salespeople to speak with customers and prospects, understand the problems they face today, and help them fix their issues with a consultative approach, selling outcomes, not products or solutions.

2. Expertise and Focus:

Sales professionals possess expertise in building relationships, overcoming objections, and closing deals, making them valuable assets in the sales process. By leveraging their skills and focusing on engaging prospects, salespeople can add unique value and drive meaningful outcomes for both the customer and the organization.

As I share in my new book, Voice of Customer, we want salespeople to refrain from conducting market research.

3. Customer-Centric Approach:

Sales discovery and qualifying are inherently customer-centric activities that prioritize understanding and addressing individual prospects’ specific needs and challenges. Salespeople demonstrate their commitment to delivering value and building customer trust by engaging in personalized conversations and providing tailored solutions.

We train and coach salespeople never to assume a current or new prospect has a problem. Through research, we may have learned common problems customers and prospects face today. In the sales training and coaching programs, we help sales teams take these market insights and turn them into strong discovery and qualifying questions that demonstrate competence, build trust, and help salespeople understand the need to be solved completely.

4. Alignment with Sales Goals:

Ultimately, salespeople’s primary goal is to drive revenue and achieve sales targets. While VoC research informs broader strategic initiatives, sales discovery and qualifying directly contribute to the bottom line by identifying qualified leads and closing deals. Salespeople should focus on activities that align with their sales goals and priorities.

As Scaling-up coaches, we often help teams with an interactive exercise called the functional accountability exercise to ensure which role owns what task.
Marketing and product management understand the market and customer problems from a strategic point of view. They help organizations understand how customers want to be served and the criteria they need to make buying decisions.

Marketing and product management will gather insights to determine customer satisfaction and Net Promotor score.

Sales take the insights, tools, and content marketing develops, meets with ideal customers, and asks strong discovery questions to confirm that the customer or prospect has problems they can solve.

In addition, we train salespeople how to qualify the customer.

Do they have a budget?

Do you know if the person you are speaking with has the authority to make a purchase?

Do we clearly understand the need?

Do we know the customer’s timeline?

Next steps…

With marketing insights and persona-based messaging, salespeople increase sales and drive explosive growth in revenue and profits.

With robust discovery and qualifying skills, salespeople find more opportunities to quote and significantly increase their close rates.

While Voice of Customer (VoC) research, sales discovery, and qualifying are essential components of writing a strategic sales and marketing plan, the sales and marketing teams have distinct purposes and require different approaches.

Salespeople should prioritize selling activities that leverage their expertise, training, and coaching, as well as focus on understanding customer needs and driving revenue generation.

Marketing and product management often hire industry-leading trained market researchers to gather actionable unbiased insights to serve their customers and markets today.

By understanding the distinction between VoC research and sales discovery and qualifying, sales professionals can optimize their efforts and maximize their impact in driving sales success.

Let’s schedule a call if you would like to gather actionable customer insights and train your salespeople in discovery and qualifying skills.

Do You Have the Right Sales Structure?

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Increase Sales: Fix Broken Windows in How Your Team Sells

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Is your sales team prepared to win and achieve their sales goals today? Do your salespeople consistently exhibit the discipline to drive profitable sales growth? Do your salespeople clearly understand your expectations and they are accountable to them? One way to ensure your sales team breaks the growing global trend of sales teams not achieving sales growth goals is to fix broken windows in your sales organization. In this post we will discuss where to look for broken windows that are hurting your sales performance.

I am very thankful to a number of my mentors over the years. They taught me how to capture and leverage the voice of the customer and how to serve customers by providing industry insights and best practices to improve their bottom line. One mentor taught me how to listen, actively listen for unresolved problems. Mentors help salespeople understand the discipline required to drive profitable sales growth and to be accountable for key behaviors that if performed consistently will drive profitable sales growth. Having disciple and being accountable is not about doing 1,000’s of things perfectly. Being accountable and having discipline is about is having clear goals and expectations on how you will achieve those goals. As the sales leader it is about inspecting what you expect and understanding the behaviors and attitudes to support key goals.

I am very proud of my children. My dream for my children was I would grow a business and give it to them one day to run. In running the business they would learn the life lessons I experienced and have financial freedom. I discovered about 15 years ago this was only my dream. My children had much different plans. My daughter became an amazing artist and now is the social media marketing manager for a company driving 3-5 times the traffic to their trade events and website leveraging her artistic skills creating innovative content. My son has a burning desire to serve and protect others and a police officer.

Over the holidays my son and I were talking and he shared something called “Broken Window Theory” and I thought it was fascinating. Broken window theory suggests that visible signs of crime like cars stripped and up on blocks in the street, street signs missing, traffic lights not working, people consuming alcohol in public and other anti- social behaviors create an environment for more crime and more serious crimes. The theory suggests that policing methods that target minor crimes such as vandalism, public drinking and others create an atmosphere of order and lawfulness, thereby preventing more serious crimes.

In the 1969 a psychologist named Philip Zinbardo from Stanford ran an experiment. He parked a car with no license plates in two neighborhoods. One that was run down, broken windows and signs of crime and one in an affluent neighborhood in Palo Alto California. The car parked in the run down neighborhood was vandalized within 10 minutes. Next he smashed the front window and what he observed surprised him. Others in the neighborhood with vandalism and other crimes joined in and within 24 hours the entire car was stripped to the frame. Who did the vandalizing is what was disturbing: It was respectable adults in the community often with their children not …street gangs.

The car in Palo Alto remained untouched.

The findings from the study?

Unintended behavior leads to a breakdown of community controls

One broken window leads to many if left unaddressed

Disorders drives fear and withdraw from community laws and norms

Even the best citizens in a community can start bad behaviors if the behaviors are left unchecked

My son has been a police officer in a large city now for a number of years. He has personally experienced how policing and correcting what seems like minor misdemeanor crimes helps bring a neighborhood back to life. He has seen the impact having the discipline to enforce common community norms and expectations that support a safe and prosperous community and how this reduces crime significantly.

“Ok Mark, this is all interesting … but how does this apply to driving profitable sales increases year over year?”

I thought you would never ask!

How many broken windows exist in your company’s sales organization?

Do you know where to look?

The good news is you have a good smart team and there are many things about your company you and your team should be proud of. When I did business development consulting work I asked a lot of questions and looked for broken windows that are signs of much bigger sales problems to be solved. It is not unusual for my past clients to not even see the broken windows they walk by each day. Many broken windows have been broken for years and they became “ how we do things around here”. New team members will see them immediately but if they want to survive they learn to look the other way. Instead of repairing the broken windows teams try to just cover them up.

Let me help you see the broken windows that I have seen because you too may have grown accustomed to seeing them and may walk by them everyday and they are hurting your business development and sales growth efforts…

Majority of salesperson’s time spent in non-sales activities

“Hi how are you meetings” …Salespeople bringing donuts to their distributors with no other business reason for the visit, no one at the distributor even knew you were coming

Not being properly groomed

Company car dirty inside and out

Not making eye contact with customers in meetings

Sales people not taking notes in meetings

Salespeople not having a pen visiting a customer job site and having to “remember” the requirements

No pre-call plans

No CRM entry for future meetings or past meeting notes

Outdated company brochures in sales associate’s vehicles

Damaged and stained brochures from not being properly stored used in customer presentations

Poor or no customer follow up

Not following up on leads provided, QDD disorder

Salespeople leaving sales training to make/ take phone calls

Customer email not responded to in 24 hours

Out-dated sales process

Salespeople working on laptops in meetings and not paying attention

Missing team weekly meetings

Salespeople openly criticizing others on sales team, others on other teams ( not constructive criticism )

Not responding top your email of voicemail in 48 hours if you asked them to

No plan to achieve their sales goals

Showing up late to weekly meetings

Salespeople playing feature and benefit bingo

Not being prepared for weekly meetings

No cadence for how often they visit with each customer

Not completing expense reports timely

Poor interpersonal exchanges with team members from other business groups

Talking too much in meetings with customers

Salespeople who have never been trained in sales (product-yes, sales-no)

Not understanding their customers’ businesses

Not understanding their market or market language

No dollar value in CRM for new opportunities identified

Not understanding how your product or service impacts your customers’ bottom line

Not qualifying potential customers

Salespeople seen as just another rep not a trusted advisor

Salespeople not spending the majority of their time in sales behaviors

Not updating sales stage in CRM

Asking poor questions in meetings

Poor listening, talking over customers

Selling on price not value

No ideal customer profile so everyone could be a customer

Company vehicle not maintained

Poor to no relationships at key customers

Key account budgets/goals… but no strategic growth plans on how to achieve them

Only knowing the buyers at key accounts no relationship with other influencers

Sales pipeline bucket not a funnel

Poor new product sales

Poor sales customer visit trip planning (more time driving and flying than in front of customers)

No formal sales process

Salespeople staying at very expensive hotels

Salespeople submitting very expensive dinners without customers

If you see some of the above you have broken windows that need to be repaired before your team can experience explosive sales growth.

The above are some broken windows I have observed but there are plenty more I am sure.

How about you…

What broken windows have you observed in your sales teams that are negatively impacting your profitable growth plans?

Do you have associates in key sales leadership roles that have not been trained to lead salespeople?

Are their politically incorrect secrets that your salespeople know but are afraid to discuss?

If we allow broken windows in how we sell they hurt our ability to drive profitable sales growth and increase shareholder value. We are not saying everyone has to be perfect and 1,000’s of things. What we are saying is we need discipline and accountability in our sales teams. As the leader you need to set the expectation and insure compliance. If you observe a behavior that is not consistent with what your team has identified as your core values you must be safe to address it and correct it. If not the little broken windows become chaos and good team members in your sales community will start behaving in ways counter to driving profitable growth.

In our next post we will discuss common marketing broken windows to look for and repair.

Are your Sales People Suffering from QDD?

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Your marketing team developed a lead gen strategy that seems to be dropping a number of potential opportunities into your marketing and sales funnel. The accounts feel like they have a good possibility of becoming orders since they are from your core industries and you know they are buying products and or services just like yours. You have been tracking what looks like a strong return on marketing dollars invested based on the number of new opportunities. The entire senior management team is excited and is waiting in anticipation of hitting the sales and profit numbers. However as the sales leader you are not seeing these opportunities moving along the sales journey from opportunity to prospect to lead, and you are not seeing closed sales dollars? Why? Your salespeople are suffering from QDD.

I get excited when a team finally embraces the concept of marketing and driving what should be warm opportunities to my sales team. They took the time to do the market work and determined problems their markets have and positioned their products as solutions to those current problems. They understand your company’s value proposition and have launched your message. The number of new opportunities is climbing each week and reviewing some of the account names you know they buy a product or service like yours…but you are not seeing new orders? How can this be? Having lived this scenario more than I care to admit, what you are experiencing is QDD; Quick to Disqualify Disorder.

As I have shared many times; “Salespeople are like water and they always find the path of least resistance”…In this case it is easier to disqualify a prospect than qualify one. When presented with new opportunities sales super stars say; “awesome, I know they buy products like I sell and I will one way or the other figure out the problems they currently have and sell them”. If your salesperson is suffering from QDD they say; “ah, I have heard of this company( even if they haven’t) , I tried to sell this company six years ago( one voice mail) , I doubt they will buy, they are probably happy with their current supplier and just price shopping us, so I will follow up.” Do you hear the difference in mind set? The sales star understands the value he and your products bring and is excited to help serve one more person. The salesperson suffering with QDD will “go through the motions” but already believes he or she will not sell the account. The sales star is seeking to serve, the QDD salesperson is focused on disqualifying the opportunity quickly so no one asks the status and next step to win their business. Who do you think will win the sale?

How do you know if you have someone on your sales team suffering from QDD?

By the Numbers

The first thing I do is look at the numbers…how many opportunities has this person been given in the last 3-6 months and how many went from possible opportunity to lead to close? Compare this to others on your team and if you find a disproportionate amount of opportunities are not turning into qualified leads, your salesperson has QDD.

By Mix

Review the product mix sold by your team. Quickly you should see a few patterns emerge. Look for anyone on your team who does not meet a similar product mix. What I am particularly looking for here is new products, sales from products you have been aggressively marketing. Salespeople suffering from QDD will have their product mix heavily weighted with older products or services in your offering.

By Margins

Assuming your marketing group has done their job and the products you have and are launching are brilliant solutions to unresolved market problems, you should have priced them at a higher margin based on the value they provide. Salespeople with QDD will have the lowest blended profit margin for their area of responsibility. They do not understand how to sell value so they take a commodity and relationship selling approach.

By Listening

Sales super stars will focus on the value, the value the customer will receive once their problem is solved. They are excited to help the customer, serve the customer they are shocked if they don’t move to the next step in the sales process. Salespeople with QDD will tell you their (your) customers are all about price and we are too high. The shame is when I interview buyers on why they do not buy as I do, rarely is price even on the list. What buyers do say is the salesperson did not seem to understand my problem, did not listen, and therefore I did not trust their solution. You very likely could of, should have won their business, but because your salesperson is suffering from QDD the buyer lacked trust. You will also hear another why you are not able to break into this account and it will sound something like; “he’s got a great relationship with his current supplier and won’t even consider us.” Relationships are important don’t get me wrong, however if a buyer trusts you can better solve a problem than a current supplier you should at least move to the next step in your sales process and not be dismissed so early.

View the CRM

Take time to review the CRM entries. Sales stars will be logging discussions, and have future appointments scheduled and maybe even new business quoted. Salespeople with QDD will have a series of entries that say; “left voicemail” and “sent email” and the prospects will only have one or two entries. Sales stars know you need to engage with buyers 8-10 times before activity occurs. QDD salespeople go through the motions, as if to say; “yes, I did my job, I made the call, but they obviously were not interested or they would have called me back,” They are focused more on showing activity than driving results.

So how about your sales team?

Are you hitting your sales and profit goals?

Do you have one salesperson consistently missing their goals?

Are you seeing this salesperson not moving opportunities through your sales process to the next level?

Are you concerned one or more of your sales team has QDD?

QDD cripples sales growth efforts. Arguably all good sales stars have a bit of ADHD , but this along with a compelling desire to serve and win they charge forward believing they have the talent and products to win. QDD salespeople believe if new sales were out there they would have already won them. They are not sold on how sales occur today and are waiting for things to get back to normal. Well, this is the new normal and they must adapt.

The first step in solving any problem is identifying you have it. If this post made you wonder about one or a couple of salespeople on your team I recommend you take the five steps above to learn if one of your team members is QDD. Aside from lost sales that could have, should have been won, I want to warn you QDD is highly contagious and must be identified, quarantined and cured as soon as possible. This condition is curable if the salesperson agrees they want to fix it. If you have a team member who does not agree they have symptoms of QDD and are not willing to change you must quickly remove them from the responsibility of calling on new prospects and possibly explore more of a service to existing customer’s role.

How to Create “Sales Velocity”; Turn “Street Legal Salespeople” into Servant Salespeople

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It’s not enough to just be “street legal”

I am often asked by business owners and leaders; “What is the best way to create sales growth that becomes repeatable and predictable?” I prefer to phrase this somewhat differently to achieve what the business leaders really want;

“How can I create real Sales Velocity?”

When I hear someone say;

I want more sales

I need more sales

How do I increase sales quickly?

What I immediately think is ; how do we create sales velocity for this team? In this post I will share one way to insure you build a foundation for achieving and often surpassing your sales goals by creating Servant Salespeople .

So what is “sales velocity”? In a previous post I said;

Sales Velocity is Sales Acceleration, with Direction and creates Momentum.

Sales velocity is not just “more sales”. When you ask your team to “go get more sales”, or my favorite with regards to hitting their sales growth goals; “just make it happen” you are in essence saying any sale is a good sale. We all know this is not true, but what will happen is sales will take a shotgun approach to the market and often bring in business you may not want and worse yet may not be able to execute effectively and create brand damaged buyers. In addition to often permanently damaging your brand in the marketplace you also run the risk of turning your salespeople into “snake oil salesmen” and they will make all kinds of promises your product or service was never meant to do. If left unchecked you will receive crazy orders you never should have received from customers you will never extend credit to and your team will jump through costly hoops to try to fulfill them.

When I used to conduct sales and marketing seminars, I would share the worst kind of business to win is one order. Once you win that “one order” you now have the liability of servicing it, hearing customer complaints (often now through social media), and sales assumes the position you want more orders like this.

I was in church last Sunday at Grace United Methodist Church and Pastor Don was talking about how it’s not enough to be a “street legal Christian”. Don does a great job of telling stories that have analogies to help people understand the message. In this message he shared how he and a buddy when they were 16 years old had this old beater of a car. He shared how the steering wheel had about 90 degrees of play in it and how the floorboards were all rusted out and you could see the pavement while driving. They had a rear brake light broken out so they covered it with cellophane and used red paint to make it look and somewhat work like a brake light. The car had all kinds of issues but technically it was “street legal”. The car met the basic requirements to be on the road, but really should not have been driven as it was an accident waiting to happen.

Don later pulled this analogy full circle and shared how Jesus taught us we are not to just be street legal Christians that go to church, maybe read a bible once in a while and go through the motions. As I drove home it dawned on me I have seen this many times over the past 30 years in leading sales turnarounds with “street legal salespeople” too. They have the title of sales and they go through the motions of sales but really do not have the heart to serve their clients and solve their customer’s problems.

What is a Street Legal Salesperson you might ask?

Received some basic product training.

They have some understanding of how to reach buyers.

They want to hit their sales goals and corresponding commission checks.

They often have some bad sales habits.

They come close to hitting their sales goal each year, not terrible but not sales super stars.

They try hard.

They are often commission junkies. (not their fault by the way)

At or below the acceptable targeted profit margin for your product or service.

Have problem customers, who complain, pay late or not at all.

When you hear them on the phone with a customer you cringe, but if it works… ah what the heck…

They go through the motion of sales…

The role of sales has evolved over the last 30 years from my perspective. At one time the salesperson was the keeper of the information keys. They did not need to be as good at listening and understanding customer needs as they needed to be aggressive and persistent and know their product inside and out. The salesperson had all the product information and used their sales product binders to answer questions as they arose. They worked hard on relationship selling. Back in the day we taught salespeople the objections buyers would probably make and how to overcome objections.

Next we saw sales consultants/ consultative selling emerge as product experts who would help buyers understand how their product or service might solve the buyers’ problems. In essence they were sales translators who translated what their products did in a language buyers understood once they found a problem they can solve.

Then the internet shifted the power from the salesperson to the buyer. The buyer now can Google almost anything and now has access to the product information keys. We have seen social selling emerge as buyers investigate products and their salespeople with tools like LinkedIn, blogs, online case studies and industry group forums where they openly share poor buying experiences. Buyers are connecting with companies who are seen as thought leaders and they make it their quest to understand buyer problems, criteria and buying processes.

I believe the next sales person emerging is the Servant Salesperson.

What are the characteristics of Servant Salespeople?

They understand the various buyer personas in their market.

They understand why buyers buy and how buyers buy.

They understand the buying process and criteria buyers use to buy.

They are constantly sensing their market for any changes in how buyers buy.

They listen for problems buyers’ share that can be solved by their product or service.

They have a continuous improvement approach to both product and sales training.

They do online research prior to reaching out to a potential customer.

They have large social networks with many customer referrals praising their service.

They ask open ended questions to understand buyer problems.

They seek first to serve and believe if they solve customer problems income will follow.

The days of snake oil salesmen promising their products and services do whatever the buyer needs is over. Buyers are seeking authentic sales servants who seek to win their business by completely solving their problems,providing the best total buying experience, and salespeople who help them buy. Buyers today see a commission junkie coming from a mile away. Aggressive salespeople are blocked and filtered with email, voice mail and gate keepers. Buyers are looking for salespeople who are focused on serving them.

What stage of selling is your sales team in today?

Would a “servant salesperson” be welcome in your organization? Why or why not?

Why wouldn’t a buyer in your industry welcome a “servant salesperson”?

Just as we are not designed to be “street legal Christians” buyers today do not want “street legal salespeople” who go through the motions of trying to solve the buyers problems.

Servant Salespeople create sales velocity because they authentically seek to solve buyer problems.

Increase Sales: Turn your “Sales Bucket” into a “Marketing and Sales Funnel” That Generates Revenue

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Steve Patrrizi new sales funnel — Steve Patrizi new sales funnel

In my last post I shared what CEO’s and business owners often share about sales: Why can’t it be more predictable, more systematic? The good news is it can. The unfortunate thing is most companies believe they have a marketing and sales funnel when in reality they have a sales bucket. A “sales bucket” is when all your opportunities, prospects and leads are all floating around together and many dying because you lack a process to help them buy. In a sales bucket opportunities that should become sales make a big splash when they enter your system but fail to leak out the bottom as a sale. In this post I will share how I have helped companies turn their sales buckets into revenue generating marketing and sales funnel generating revenue on a consistent and predictable basis.

When I hear a business leader say: What we need is a repeatable sales process. We need the sales guys to be more efficient at closing business and bringing in the revenue. What I hear them saying is : Why can’t my sales and marketing be more of a science and less of an art form? …it is too random, too unpredictable and it drives me nuts that I can’t count on the sales forecasts I am given.” These made me want to do some more research and answer the question: What is science?

At its very foundation science seeks to identify patterns. Through identifying and watching patterns, scientists uncover laws that are ultimately translated into math equations. These patterns follow one of two interwoven features; physical laws and environmental influences. With the common pattern of as high as 96% of leads going unsold…what is the pattern and what can we do to improve?

For companies who lack a marketing and sales funnel over the years the current market has only made this problem even worse. It used to be, back in the day, back when sales was the “keeper of the keys of product information” , marketing just had to dump prospects and leads into the top of the funnel and sales was responsible for pulling them through to a sale. The funnel and the function of the funnel changed as Steve Patrizi points out here. Today buyers are more informed and as much as 60%-80% of the buying process is over before they contact you. I read an article recently that shared the most important number in B2B marketing is 60%.

What does this figure mean for Marketing?

60% … This is no man’s land: a gap in the purchasing funnel that neither commercial function currently addresses.
The 60% mark is in that part of the mid-funnel that is critical in terms of driving the buyers’ consideration of a supplier for a potential purchase.
60% also means trying to build a dialogue with customers without having the advantage of a Sales rep’s one-on-one commercial interaction.
Finally, 60% means moving beyond the “qualified lead” mindset. In essence, once we have moved past the early stages of the funnel, we need a strategy for persuasion and attention-grabbing mechanisms.

Our job today becomes understanding how buyers buy, what common problems do they have, and turn our sales bucket into a slippery marketing and sales funnel that helps buyers buy. So how do we do that? What have I seen work? Below is the process I have used to help take the art out of sales and make it a much more predictable, forecast able, outcome.

Establish a common language – what does your team mean by a; Prospect, Inquiry, Opportunity, Lead?
Go into your market, ideally on four legged sales calls and clearly understand how your buyers buy and the criteria they need to make buying decisions.
Identify market truth’s
Map Buying journey
Create a marketing funnel that helps buyers buy
Stop the “sales insanity” and map a repeatable sales process that turns leads to sales
constantly sense and refine, adjust , be agile as your buyers change their processes change with them
Measure, measure, measure…
identify “the canary in your coal mine”, your lead to close %
Nurture your leads, improve your lead to close % by helping them slide through the funnel with what they need when they need it.

Do you have a sales bucket with opportunities that should become sales (leads you paid good money for already) dying?

Do you know why buyers buy from you and why they don’t?

What do your buyers need today to make buying decisions?

Do your sales people have the right sales tools to make the sales funnel slippery or is buying from you like sliding down a sliding board lined with sand paper and splinters?

Attention CEO’s and CFO’s; Do you have a “Sales and Marketing Funnel” or Bucket? …the answer may surprise you, take a short quiz and know for sure

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do you have a marketing and sales funnel or a leaking sales bucket?

“Wouldn’t it be great if we could have our sales and marketing run like our plant? We could have key indicators, a proven methodology, and process with predictable results…”I hear business owners and leaders say this to me often once they relax and truly share their thoughts and concerns. Far too often CEO’s and CFO’s think/hope their marketing and sales teams have a defined process that is efficient and effective to drive predictable results. Unfortunately, if you really understand and look at leading indicators what they think is a marketing and sales funnel is actually a sales bucket. In this post I will share how to determine if your team has a marketing and sales funnel or a sales bucket that leaks an occasional sale or two.

I was asked by the chairman of the board of a company to have lunch. He heard through his venture capital and private equity network what I do, and he was warned early on my approach is a bit different. I enjoy meeting new people and business problems are drawn to me. I enjoy learning new things, facing new challenges and each meeting like this one always teaches me something. Once we made it through the pleasantries it was not too long for me to hear his concerns;

Why can’t sales and marketing be like my manufacturing plant? Predictable, scalable, and provide me sales forecasts I can count on?

It drives me nuts to know we are spending so much money on marketing and I do not see an immediate and often long term return on that investment, but I am afraid to stop making it in case it would hurt the performance we are seeing.

What we need is a repeatable sales process. We need the sales guys to be more efficient at closing business and bringing in the revenue.

Based on our moderate to poor sales results over the last few years, do I have the right salespeople or should I be looking for new ones?

I feel like the CEO / President is asking for more money each year for marketing, but I am not seeing a corresponding increase in sales…why?

We seem to have high turnover in sales, we lost some good sales people and this has to be expensive and hurting our results.

About the time we finished eating he said; “what do you think? Is this something you can help with, can you fix sales problems like this?”

I have and often do “fix sales problems.” However more often than not what CEO’s and business owners want to hear on how to fix sales problems is not the way they anticipate. In most cases they think they have a repeatable sales process, but they don’t.

They think they have a marketing funnel that is dumping primed and ready leads to their salespeople and their sales people have a proven way to close them quickly. They think they need more sales training. They think they need to better motivate their sales people to perform. No, no, no and in most cases no again.

What I have observed in most cases is leaders, particularly those not from marketing and sales believe they have a marketing and sales funnel, but in reality they have a bucket, with an every so small hole in the bottom that occasionally leaks a sale or two. Left unchecked this marketing and sales bucket becomes a Chinese water torture to your senior leadership team as they try to explain and predict future revenues and ROI with owners and investors. As one thought leader just shared, what they think is a funnel of live and vibrant leads and opportunities is actually pipeline stench. The pipelines may look full and make you feel good in senior management meetings Monday mornings…but are actually full of dead and rotting opportunities polluting your entire marketing and sales process.

Do you have a Marketing and Sales Funnel or Bucket?

What is your lead to close %? Do you know it?
Do you have defined stages in the marketing and sales pipeline? What are they?
Can you share the # in each phase?
If I met with your latest new salesperson, could they share your repeatable sales process with me?
Does sales and marketing have an understood definition of the terms; opportunity, prospect, lead?
Can you tell me the average time a new person you engage with spends in your process until they buy or die?
Can you share the qualifying questions you use?
Do you have the top three buyer personas identified and have you mapped out their buying journey?
Have you added new sales tools in the last 6-12 months?
Does your web site speak in the tone of the problems you solve?

If the answers I receive to the above have three or more “no’s” you have Marketing and Sales Bucket not a funnel.

How about your company?

Do you have a “Marketing Funnel”, “Sales Funnel” a “Repeatable Sales process”?….are you sure? (you need to be)

What other questions could we ask to determine if you have a funnel of vibrant buyers anxious to buy and solve their problems, or a bunch of rotting dead leads just polluting your management process?

In the market of today there is no excuse to not have marketing and sales funnel that is a systematic process driven tool to maximize your team’s effectiveness and do so in the most efficient way.

So did this post make you nervous, anxious, and maybe a bit angry? As your team for the answers to the above that I use to diagnose teams I serve, and you will quickly understand your internal truths. Once you do, you are well on your way to driving a process that gets results. In my next post I will share some techniques I have used to turn marketing and sales buckets into funnels.

Want to Improve your Sales and Profits? “Reboot Your Business”… (and yourself)

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If you have been in business for a while like I have one thing we can always count on is “change”. Markets change, the way buyers buy changes, and how customers find you have drastically changed over the past 10 years. Like it or not, there has been a huge shift in power from the company and salesperson to the buyer who can now find more information about your company and products (and you) with a few simple mouse clicks. Has your business been agile and identified these changes and adapted? Or are you waiting for business to get back to normal as I hear so many say? Well, I hate to be the one to tell you, this is the new normal! If you are one of those business leaders that recognize changes have occurred but are having a hard time getting your head around what to do about it, there is a brilliant book by thought leader Mitch Joel titled; Ctrl Alt Delete, Reboot your business. Reboot your life. Your future depends on it.

My wife and I had a plan over the July 4^th holiday. We invited all my wife’s relatives and my daughter’s college friends over for an old fashioned July 4th cookout. We planned a simple menu per my daughters request with hamburgers and hot dogs, baked beans, my wife’s aunt Shannon’s famous potato salad and my daughter planned to make another one of her creative desserts. I bought charcoal and decided to grill old school instead of over gas. We bought the supplies, invited everyone, and planned an afternoon out side that included some bocce ball, Frisbee, and watching the fireworks from the deck. We had a plan.

Ohio weather decided to change our plans with rain on and off all day. I hoped it would stop long enough to grill the food but around 4:00 pm I needed a plan B. So I moved the grill under the shelter of the front porch and although “no one grills on their front porch” we adapted, the food was great and everyone had a great time together.

This experience reminded me of the book I just finished this week; Ctrl Alt Delete. It reminded me of how environments and business landscapes change and will be changing again and we must and need to adapt or we risk going hungry. I wonder why it is so easy, second nature for us to adapt in our everyday lives but in business we struggle to change, we fight the tendency to be nimble and agile. Why? Is it hubris, laziness, and or even fear? Or is it something deeper, something that was blended into my generation’s’ DNA? I was born in the early 1960’s and my father started out his career as a meter reader with the local natural gas company. His company sent him to college at night and after 25 years of moving up the corporate ladder held a senior level financial position when he retired. This is the way we were taught how it works, how it was supposed to be… right?

So imagine how I feel, and how my dad must scratch his head with the crazy life I have led. I have served many companies over the past 30 years as you can see from my Linked In profile. My titles have included Account Rep to VP of Sales and Marketing, from COO for one assignment to Managing Director for another company. I have been a sales coach, entrepreneur, marketing strategy consultant, author, and public speaker. I led a few start ups and turnarounds as President and CEO. However admittedly if I am being totally transparent with you (and myself) a part of me has felt there is something wrong with me. Why have not I not been able to do what my dad did and work for one company for 30 + years retire with a pension, benefits and winter in Florida like everyone else from Ohio? In the second part of Mitch Joel’s book he discusses how we as individuals must also adapt and change. He calls it embracing the squiggle. The squiggle is what I have done….a number of different roles based on the problems to be solved, many different industries and if you were to graphically plot it it would not look like my fathers straight line career trajectory, but would be a squiggly line with little if any ability to plot or predict the next data point.

Another area where I feel I do not fit in and quietly has made me feel anxious and sometimes guilty is… I like to work. I enjoy bumping into problems to be solved. I have developed over the years the ability to see around corners as I share with my children. I use this gift of pattern recognition and shape strategies that work. What I do for companies does not feel like “work” but more like my sport, play, my art. In the early 2000’s I even branded it “the art of thoughts” trying to explain the service I provided but quickly stopped using that description as my customers and market were not quite ready for it yet. This book shares how today and the future will challenge all those leave it to beaver work life models we have had woven into our DNA and how there now is a blend of work and non work life. Technology enables us, affords and empowers us the ability to work anywhere, anytime, and because of this make more time for our families if we use it correctly. The future strategies that will drive explosive sales growth will not be developed in boardrooms but in coffee shops deep in the markets you serve.

Not since David Meerman Scott’s book: The New Rules of Marketing and PR has a book grabbed me like Ctrl Alt Delete and I wanted to share it with you. I highly recommend if you have been waiting for your business to get back to normal, searching for a crystal ball that will give you some hint of what the future has in store you, or like me have seen and felt a blending of your work and non work life, …you buy and study this book.

How about you…Have you too seen and experienced major changes in your business?

Have you adapted and embraced social marketing?…or do you still think it’s a fad?

Has your business raised the surrender flag and admitted you no longer have the power, or have you dug in like Colonel Custer who also had a plan?

The reality of today is buyers can now find more information about your company, product, salesperson, and the leaders of your organization with a few simple mouse clicks. How buyers buy, how consumers shop, and how employers search for and hire new team members has forever changed and will continue to evolve and change. Will you adapt and survive or dig your heals and do it the way we have always done it around here? ( and how’s that working for you?) It truly is your choice; I hope and pray you chose wisely.

Dispel 5 Myths about Fixing Sales Today and Insure Strong Future Sales

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Over the last few weeks I have been discussing common myths business owners and leaders believe to be true about the fixing sales problems and how to immunize future sales performance. I recently went for my annual flu shot and the myths people in line were discussing as truths reminded me of the five main myths sales leaders need to lose to fix poor sales performance and how we can immunize future sales results. Before I can help you fix your sales problems we need to dispel the 5 myths that you may be carrying as market truths;

You cannot Train your way out of a sales problems alone.

You cannot Manage your way to improved sales alone.

The Economy is not the only reason for your poor sales performance alone.

Hiring outside help to work on your Sales Process will not hurt your current sales.

Just because you have Good Sales Now does not immunize you from future poor sales results.

What is the best way to immunize your sales performance from poor results?

Clean Sales Management

Clean Sales Management as I shared in a previous post entails being in your market on four legged sales calls with your sales team. As a reminder, you are not there to close sales but to observe buyers.

You need to answer;

Why do buyers buy from you and why don’t they?

What is their buyer journey today?

What sales process is your team using? (… if any)

What are common buyer personas your team is presenting?

What criteria are important to your buyers today?

When your buyers shop for a solution, where do they go, what process do they use?

Are there any “Spin Cycles” in your current sales process that no longer mirror how your buyers are buying today? (Spin cycle- those places in the sales process where the sale stalls, spins, or even goes dark)

What tools could your salespeople use to overcome or eliminate buyer Spin Cycles?

As a sales manager, and more so if you are the VP of Sales you have a number of activities all vying for your time and attention. Having been a VP of Sales and Marketing myself I experienced the following all pulling me like they had a gravitational power of their own;

Your CEO and President want answers to specific questions

Hitting your new sales goals

Hitting your profit objectives

Controlling expenses

IT wants to book SAP training and your opinion on what a CRM should do

A/R wants help collecting from difficult customers

Marketing wants your sales guys to ask their buyers …. (you fill in the blanks)

Forecasting

Cost of Quality meetings

Meeting with the CFO forecasting ROI and sales forecast for new products

HR wanting to have succession plans in place, quarterly performance reviews, performance improvement plans, and on-boarding discussions

Product Development wanting to know why we are not hitting new product sales

Meetings with Product Engineering discussing problems with their last new design

Product Marketing wanting to meet about why sales is not closing a higher % of leads

Social Media group wanting stories from the field

More meetings you did not even know were on the list

…do I need to keep typing or do you agree I have lived this?

If you try to do all of the above you can quickly become an “an office bound VP of sales” and this is the beginning of the death of a sales VP. The reality is you (we) need to do all of the above and more. However what keeps us employed, hitting our bonus objectives and answering the top four activities above; answering President and CEO questions strategically and timely, hitting sales goals, achieving profit objectives and controlling expenses…you need to be in the market practicing clean sales management. In your market you become aware of market changes, viruses, which can infect your sales results early and keep your team’s sales performance on plan.

Improve Sales; Hiring Outside Help To Work On Your Sales Process Will Not Make Your Sales Results Worse

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The first quarter of each new year often starts out as a struggle for sales teams to achieve their new goals. Your sales team has received a new and bigger goal, (there’s a high probability they missed last year’s goal) and now your team’s sales performance is poor or put another way; it is sick. When you ask business leaders why they will not hire someone to help improve sales performance and immunize their team from future performance issues we often hear a fear that the market work will actually hurt sales and cause sales results to get sicker.

Assuming your team’s poor sales performance to goal will get worse by hiring an outsider to help your team is like believing if you get a flu shot, you will catch the flu….it is simply not true.

As I shared in a previous post it is not just a sales training problem, a sales management problem, or a poor economy alone. It is often so much more. Before we can clearly diagnose why your sales team is experiencing poor sales performance we need to identify a squash myths your team may believe.

I was in the line at Walgreens to receive my annual flu shot and I could not help but listen as people in line shared myths that they believed to be true about the flu and the flu shot it’s self. This reminded me of the myths I have heard over the years about poor sales performance and I wanted to dispel some of the reasons people use to rationalize poor sales performance. One that always amazes is me is leaders who chose to go it alone and actually believe working on their sales process will somehow hurt their sales.

Hiring an outsider who conducts win loss analysis will add a tremendous amount of value quickly. They will interview current customers, past customers and buyers in your market you have always wanted to sell. Their mission, if they are good is to identify the buying process, buyer journey and buying criteria your buyers are using today. They will compare how buyers are buying and want to buy to your current sales process and identify what I call “spin cycles”. Spin cycles in the current sales process are places the sales stalls and basically spins instead of proceeding to the next step. Spin cycles are resolved by adding needed sales tools and or adjusting your current sales process steps.

If your team fails to stay current with how buyers are buying in your market your team risks contracting a disconnected market virus. The longer the virus runs in course through your team the more difficult it will be to cure. There are no quick pills, quick fixes, and without senior management support to cure this condition it can become terminal.

There is only one situation where conducting market win loss work can and often does hurt your sales is when you interview a buyer currently in the sales process. Buyers in the current sales process must not be interviewed until the sale is closed or lost.

How about your team….

Have you noticed an increase in price discounting over the last three months?

Has your sales close % decreased in the last 30 days?

Are 60% or more of your sales team missing sales plan goals?

Have you lost a key account (or two) in the last 120 days?

The above are some of the symptoms your sales and specifically your sales process are sick and your team has a disconnected market virus. There are no quick fixes for viruses but the best defense is a strong offence. A flu shot will expose your body to a very small sample of the flu and allow your body to build your immunities over time. Staying current with how your buyers are buying and the buying criteria they are using to make buying decisions is the best way to immunize your sales from experiencing poor sales results.

I would be remiss if I did not warn you that win loss analysis and working on your sales process will likely have some side affects;

challenge assumptions your senior leaders believed to be true and they will become uncomfortable
expose disconnected and dated processes
can cause some emotional upset when you learn lost sales were not based on price
may give your marketing team heartburn when you find 80% of the buying process is done before buyers call you and your current web site is invisible
may make you feel ill when you learn how your salespeople believe their main responsibility is to protect the fort and not help buyers buy

The side affect will pass overtime and your team will quickly become stronger and your sales results healthier as you adjust your sales process and introduce new sales tools to help your buyers buy.