Sales Pipeline Management

What is Sales Pipeline Management?

In today’s increasingly competitive world, companies must focus obsessively on maximising their sales opportunities. They must ensure that:

They invest their sales time, resources and investments in the areas of highest return
They achieve a regular flow of sales into the company to avoid damaging “boom-bust” cycles
They are able to rapidly respond to the changing needs of customers and specific opportunities and adapt their sales tactics accordingly
They can identify and diagnose which areas of their sales approach are working well and which need improvement
They can accurately track and forecast their sales and take corrective actions where needed
Sales Pipeline Management is a key management tool which has been developed to address these issues – yet many companies fail to implement it effectively, if at all.

Many organisations still rely heavily on instinct, guesswork and “seat-of-the-pants” management to control their sales pipelines. As a result, many are trapped in a vicious circle where they over-focus on highly visible areas such as closing late-stage deals, and under-invest in key areas such as early-stage lead generation.

This leads to a further drying up of quality opportunities, a panic-driven focus on closing the few remaining opportunities in the pipeline at all costs, and more neglect of the critical front-end. For small or medium-sized businesses – and particularly for owner-managed companies – this can be even more crippling, as the key business-winners are often also heavily involved in the execution of sold work – and are easily dragged away from working on filling up the earlier stages of the pipeline.

The issue behind these problems is often the lack of a visible and rigorous sales pipeline management process. It doesn’t have to be complex – but it does have to be done.

Drs. Christiaan Janssens MBA

Executive Coach CJ Coaching

CRO Akwa Wellness

Ten Key Factors That Maximize Sales

10 Key Factors That Maximize Sales

Some sales people are successful today because they gain the majority of their targeted customers business. They manage the relationship and continuously build relationship equity. That doesn’t mean they operate with the "lone wolf"mentality doing almost everything for the customer.

These sales people are successful because they take full advantage of all the resources their company has to offer. Transactions and promos flow through a managed relationship. They also dedicate a specific amount of their time to new account development and penetration of those accounts with high potential rather than over providing service functions to existing accounts. Ten Key identifying factors that will help maximize sales success include:

1. Not being afraid to prospect for new accounts and new business. Have enough confidence to view rejection as simply a step closer to success.

2. Understanding the value of planning and actually documenting the key actions necessary to meet specific objectives at specific accounts.

3. Become professional with your planned presentations whether it is to an individual buyer or a group of customer decision makers. Perfect your elevator speech that clearly outlines your value proposition. Get it down pat for those opportunistic moments that may occur.

4. Goals are a matter of course and they include more than just revenue and margin growth. Milestones are established for target accounts to highlight progress toward their major goals.

5. No one likes record keeping and paperwork but the really successful sales professional understands the necessity and the value received in return for being methodical with their record keeping.

6. Time management should be forever on your mind and you need to continuously practice efficient time control.

7. You’ve got to be very, very, very hungy! Hungry for knowledge to improve your skills and demonstrate enough curiosity that you don’t wait for company sponsored seminars for education and training. Read, listen to tapes and finance your own self improvement in addition to company programs.

8. Don’t chase orders, chase customers. Be willing to lose an order but fight aggressively to never lose a customer unless you need to prune your territory garden due to unacceptable profitability.

9. Your objective on every sales call is to identify the customer’s real needs, not to just take an order. Take pride in being a solution provider and demand creator instead of a demand fulfiller.

10. Understand that often a key to your success lies in your ability to educate the customer. This may range in the form of business acumen to helping the customer understand real value. Become an expert at demonstrating the difference between price and cost.

The formula for success is simple:

FINDING THE CUSTOMER PAIN - TAKING THE PAIN AWAY = SETTING YOUR PRICE

Customers will pay plenty, if you can reduce their “ain” Find out what the customer’s problems are and where they are in pain. Look at it from their point of view, not yours.

Customers no longer spout off about quality products and reliable deliveries. That’s a given. Although all customers are trained to say “Your Price is to High”, if you find the pain, price is not an issue. Remember the emerging role of the sales professional today is not to increase sales. Let me repeat that— your role today is not to increase sales. Your role as a sales professional today is to systematically and consistently increase the number of customers who choose you to be their #1 supplier……..

And it’s not about Features and Benefits

Today it’s not about the features and benefits of your product or service. It’s about value and how your customers are going to make a profit. You no longer just sell yourself and everything falls into place. Today, relationships are still very important but they are the ante to play. Customers are smarter and more educated. You must bring every resource your company has into play and leverage those resources to create competitive advantage. Learn to really listen to your customers. Let them talk and when there seems to be a pause in the conversation resist the temptation to start talking again. Chances are good that the customer has more to say. The quieter you are the more they will tell you. Listen long enough with a few strategically placed questions and the customer might just tell you exactly how to gain his business. (And it won’t just be about price)

Drs. Christiaan Janssens MBA

Executive Coach CJ Coaching

CRO Akwa Wellness

3 Types of Negotiators

3 Types of Negotiators

Essentially there are 3 personality types in any negotiation, each with their own skills and style, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. How they interact can have a great impact on the negotiation outcomes, and a skilled negotiator will learn to recognize each style in his counterpart and use it to his advantage. But they do not exist exclusively and there is an element of each style in every one of us, recognizing that and controlling the triggers can be very influential in negotiations.

The Competitor

The first is possible the most easily recognized because he is the guy most people associate with negotiations. He is the hard ball player, who thrives on the cut and thrust, on the competition and who wants to win everything. This is the guy who will advocate stronger than he will empathize, he likes to be purposeful and in control, rarely patient he seeks out an ambitious position and fights to protect it, he wants the biggest slice of the pie. In a distributive argument he has some advantages but he is also the person most likely to produce a stalemate or escalate a dispute. He is less likely to worry about relationships and may cause damage to them if the other side resents his actions. He is the man who is most likely to get riled up and lose his temper. He may be the man you want on your side for tough distributive questions but he may be the man who breaks down the negotiation. In a dual party negotiation team he will be the bad cop, having recognized him many times in past negotiations, knowing which buttons to push can be useful. If the other side want to use a delay tactic then all they need to do is to wind up the competitor until he loses self-control, then is the time to call for a recess. He is not to be discounted though, when the tough decisions need to be made, he may be the guy to make them. If it is a once off deal, and you have expanded the pie to create all the extra value, he may be the guy for the divisional process.

The Accommodator

More likely to empathize than conflict, this negotiator puts serious emphasis on the relationship between the parties. They need to be liked and will often negotiate in a style that is easy on the participants to find a quick resolution that doesn’t damage the relationship. These guys are good listeners, and they tend to have better relationships. They may even be trusted more by the other party, so if you are looking for a negotiator for a long term or repeat business deal this may be the person you are looking for. Sometimes, though, they can get played, if a tough negotiator on the other side tries to hold the relationship hostage, or makes it part of the negotiation collateral then the accommodator may give in on some value issues, or some of the distributive issue. They may not create all the value possible because they may not engage in some of the tough stuff.

The Avoider

These guys think conflict is rarely advantageous or productive and will do their utmost to avoid it. They neither over empathize nor assert, instead they tend to disengage when conflict arises. They can appear distant and uninterested. So what are they doing negotiating? Well they can have significant strategic advantages; some of the conflicts can be just avoided. Some issues do just go away without being escalated. 

The avoider may carry more weight when they speak and are listened to. However like the competitor they tend to struggle with relationship building and they may leave money on the table because they don’t use the difference in conflict to its full advantage.

What happens when these negotiators meet?

First of all it is important to recognize that none of these traits are stand-alone people, they don’t exist exclusively and we each have some element of these three characteristics. How we recognize them in ourselves and in our counterparts is crucial, and recognizing the triggers that move us from one style to the next is just as important. Know what presses your buttons and sets you off in competitive mode, this is often just as simple as a personality clash, but you need to control it. Know that when you like someone you negotiate with, at work or in another company that you may be more inclined to accommodate than to test, and definitely know who you avoid issues with. This can often be the boss, if she is a strict, no nonsense type of boss, it can be very prevalent in a small working environment, and for us all it often involves family disputes and negotiations. 

Competitor Meets Competitor:

This makes for an exciting negotiation, like a strategic dance, with offer and counter offer flying back and forth, both sides trying to win. Really high energy stuff, unfortunately with nobody listening to the other side they tend to blow completely or they reach a stalemate. They need to trade control and be very careful how they share information and interests.

Competitor Meets Avoider:

There are usually two outcomes, the competitor becomes hugely frustrated and ends up making concessions to invite the avoider in, and so becomes exploited, or the avoider becomes completely alienated and doesn’t engage at all. The challenge for the competitor is to make the negotiation inviting enough for the avoider and for the avoider to become more comfortable with assertion.

Competitor Meets Accommodator:

A nightmare for the accommodator, where has the relationship gone? The competitor can often exploit the accommodator’s will to get results quickly by forcing concessions. The accommodator needs to improve assertiveness to match empathy before he gives in and misses opportunity to advocate his own cause.

Accommodator Meets Accommodator:

There will be resolution and usually quite quickly, but not all the value will be gleaned from the process and it might be better to sometime engage in the differences and use them to expand the pie.

Accommodator Meets Avoider:

It either goes nowhere fast, because the accommodator looks after the avoider’s issues and they just avoid the discussion. However a skillful accommodator will keep the temperament in the right zone and will coax the avoider into discussion.

Avoider Meets Avoider:

What conflict? We don’t see any conflict here. They just won’t face up to the issues at all, not a good plan in the long run.

Christiaan Janssens
Executive Coach

CRO @ Spa Akwa Belgium

Source: Medation Practice

Simple Sales Statistics

Sales Statistics

Christiaan Janssens
Executive Coach
CRO @ Spa Akwa Belgium

Selling Types

Selling types

The diverse nature of the buying situation means there are many types of selling job: selling

varies according to the nature of the selling task. The figure below shows that there is a fundamental distinction between order-takers, order-creators and order-getters. 
Order-takers respond to already committed customers; order-creators do not directly receive orders since they talk to specifiers rather than buyers; order-getters attempt to persuade customers to place an order directly.

There are three types of order-takers: inside order-takers, delivery salespeople and outside

order-takers. Order-creators are termed missionary salespeople. Finally, order-getters are

either front-line salespeople consisting of new business, organisational or consumer

salespeople, or sales support salespeople who can be either technical support salespeople or merchandisers. Both types of order-getters operate in situations where a direct sale can be made.


Christiaan Janssens
Executive Coach
CRO @ Spa Akwa Belgium

Making your customers successful

Making your customers successful 

If you want to build a growth company, you must be customer focused. And that means waking up every day and asking, 

“What can I do to make my customers successful?”

Your customer’s success is your success, so it is in your best interest to make your customer as successful as possible. That doesn’t mean giving away your products and services. It does mean enabling your customer to tap the full potential of what you’re selling and to assist your customer even when that assistance doesn’t directly boost sales.

Take the time to get to know their business, their vision, their strategies for growth, their target customers, and their pain points. Talk with them and share your ideas for helping them be more successful.

You may be called on to offer your customer some free advice, refer them to other companies for products and services you don’t sell, or even do a little head-hunting for them to steer them in the direction of the most qualified personnel in your area.

Become your own customer, as much as possible. Try to buy the same product or one that’s similar to what you sell from another salesperson to discover insights from your customer’s point of view. (You don’t actually have to buy it.)

As an entrepreneurial salesperson, always think one step ahead. This means considering your customer’s customer. The single most important contribution you can make to your customer’s success is contributing to the success of your customer’s customer.

In many cases, this is primarily the responsibility of your company’s CEO or product development division, but because you probably have more direct contact with customers, you may need to carry the message back to your company. If you’re selling to a business that sells your product to consumers, keep that consumer, the end user, in mind.

But above all: be fair, be honest, do what you say you’re going to do, and deliver on time and within budget. 

Christiaan Janssens
Executive Coach

CRO @ Spa Akwa Belgium

Insight Selling

Insight Selling

Customers are increasingly circumventing salespeople. They’re using publicly available information to diagnose their own needs and turning to sophisticated procurement departments and third-party purchasing consultants to help them extract the best possible deals from suppliers. The trend will only accelerate. For sales, this isn’t just another long, hot summer; it’s wholesale climate change.

Top-performing reps have abandoned the conventional “solution selling”  and replaced it with “insight selling”. This new sales strategy demands a fundamentally different approach across several areas of the purchasing process.

Customers are coming to the negotiating table armed with a deep understanding of their problem(s) and a well-scoped RFP for a solution. It’s turning many of our sales conversations into fulfillment conversations. Reps must learn to engage customers much earlier, well before customers fully understand their own needs.

Most organizations tell their salespeople to give priority to customers whose senior management meets three criteria:

- The customer has a need for change.

- The customer has a clear vision of its goals.

 - The customer has a well-established processes for making purchasing decisions.

These three criteria are easily observable, for the most part, and reps and their leaders habitually rely on them to predict the likelihood and progress of potential deals.

Top-performing reps place little value on such traditional predictors. Instead, they emphasize two nontraditional criteria.

- They put a premium on customer agility: Can a customer act quickly and decisively when presented with a compelling case, or is it hamstrung by structures and relationships that stifle change?

- They pursue customers that have an emerging need or are in a state of organizational flux, whether because of external pressures, such as regulatory reform, or because of internal pressures, such as a recent acquisition, a leadership turnover, or widespread dissatisfaction with current practices. Since they’re already reexamining the status quo, these customers are looking for insights and are naturally more receptive to the disruptive ideas that top- performers bring to the table.

In conventional sales training reps are taught to find an advocate, or coach, within the customer organization to help them get the deal done. They’re given a list of attributes to look for. The description below suggests that the ideal advocate:

- is accessible and willing to meet when asked

- provides valuable information that’s typically unavailable to outside suppliers

- is predisposed to support the supplier’s solution

- is good at influencing others

- speaks the truth

- is considered credible by colleagues

- conveys new ideas to colleagues in savvy, persuasive ways

- delivers on commitments

- stands to personally gain from the sale

- will help reps network and connect with other stakeholders

It turns out that this idealized advocate doesn’t actually exist. Each attribute can probably be found somewhere in a customer organization, but rarely all come together in one person. So reps find themselves settling for someone who has some of them. And when choosing an advocate most reps walk right past the very people who could help them get the deal done, the people top-performers have learned to recognize and rely on.

Customer stakeholders can be classified according to 135 attributes and perspectives.

The distinct stakeholder  profile gives the relative ability of individuals of each type to build consensus and drive action around a large corporate purchase or initiative. The profiles aren’t mutually exclusive; most people have attributes of more than one.

Every stakeholder has a primary posture when it comes to working with suppliers and spearheading organizational change.

1. Go-Getters. Motivated by organizational improvement and constantly looking for good ideas, Go-Getters champion action around great insights wherever they find them.

2. Teachers. Passionate about sharing insights, Teachers are sought out by colleagues for their input. They’re especially good at persuading others to take a specific course of action.

3. Skeptics. Wary of large, complicated projects, Skeptics push back on almost everything. Even when championing a new idea, they counsel careful, measured implementation.

4. Guides. Willing to share the organization’s latest gossip, Guides furnish information that’s typically unavailable to outsiders.

5. Friends. Just as nice as the name suggests, Friends are readily accessible and will happily help reps network with other stakeholders in the organization.

6. Climbers. Focused primarily on personal gain, Climbers back projects that will raise their own profiles, and they expect to be rewarded when those projects succeed.

7. Blockers. Perhaps better described as “anti-stakeholders,” Blockers are strongly oriented toward the status quo. They have little interest in speaking with outside vendors.

Average reps gravitate toward three stakeholder profiles, and top-performers gravitate toward three others.

Average reps typically connect with Guides, Friends, and Climbers, types that we can group together as Talkers. These people are personable and accessible and they share company information freely, all of which makes them very appealing. But if your goal is to close a deal, not just have a chat, Talkers won’t get you very far: They’re often poor at building the consensus necessary for complex purchasing decisions. Ironically, traditional sales training pushes reps into the arms of Talkers thus reinforcing the very underperformance companies seek to improve.

The profiles that top-performers pursue, Go-Getters, Teachers, and Skeptics, are far better at generating consensus. We can refer to them as Mobilizers. A conversation with a Mobilizer isn’t necessarily easy. Because Mobilizers are focused first and foremost on driving productive change for their company, that’s what they want to talk about, their company, not yours. In fact, in many ways Mobilizers are deeply supplier-agnostic. They’re less likely to get behind a particular supplier than behind a particular insight. Reps who rely on a traditional features-and-benefits sales approach will probably fail to engage Mobilizers.

Endless questioning and needs diagnosis are of no value to Mobilizers. They don’t want to be asked what keeps them awake at night; they’re looking for outside experts to share insights about what their company should do, and they’re engaged by big, disruptive ideas. Yet upon hearing those ideas, Mobilizers ask a lot of tough questions, Go-Getters because they want to do, Teachers because they want to share, and Skeptics because they want to test.

Many sales reps will ignore the commotion and stick with solution selling, and their customers will increasingly reject them. But top-performers seeking out customers that are primed for change, challenging them with provocative insights, and coaching them on how to buy, will become indispensable. They may still be selling solutions, but more broadly, they’re selling insights.

Difference between Solution Selling an Insight Selling

Christiaan Janssens
Executive Coach
CRO @ Spa Akwa Belgium

Cross-selling and up-selling

Cross-selling and up-selling

Cross-selling is the action or practice of selling among or between clients, markets, traders, etc. or the action or practice of selling an additional product or service to an existing customer. This article deals exclusively with the latter meaning. In practice, businesses define cross-selling in many different ways. Elements that might influence the definition might include the size of the business, the industry sector it operates within and the financial motivations of those required to define the term.

The objectives of cross-selling can be either to increase the income derived from the client or clients or to protect the relationship with the client or clients. The approach to the process of cross-selling can be varied.

Up-selling is a sales technique whereby a seller induces the customer to purchase more expensive items, upgrades, or other add-ons in an attempt to make a more profitable sale. Up-selling usually involves marketing more profitable services or products but can also be simply exposing the customer to other options that were perhaps not considered previously. Up-selling implies selling something that is more profitable or otherwise preferable for the seller instead of, or in addition to, the original sale.

The difference between up-selling and cross-selling are fairly nuanced, which is why many sales reps and marketers talk about cross selling and up-selling as a single discipline. Philosophically, when sales reps up sell, they convince your customers to increase the value of their orders (both to you and to them) by:

- Moving up to a more expensive version of what they're already considering purchasing (e.g., the six cylinder vehicle instead of the four cylinder, upgrading from economy to business class for a flight, a 42” TV instead of a 40”)

- Adding to their orders with additional vertically related products or services (e.g., "Would you like fries with that?", extended warranty, DVD player to go with the TV, paper to go with a printer, a hands free car kit to go with a mobile phone)

Vertically related are products or services that enhance or are related to the core or base product. A cross-sell refers to sales of another product/service type horizontally related (i.e., another type of product/service usually orthogonally related if at all) to what you're already considering. For instance, when one purchases a new vehicle and the car salesman encourages the buyer to use the manufacturer's auto financing capabilities... Another cross selling example is when one calls the reservation centre of an airline and at the end of the call the agent asks if buyer needs a rental car at the destination, and if so, he/she would be delighted to connect him/her to one of their car rental partners.

How to up-sell

A little not a lot

Up-sell works better when there’s only a small difference in price between the item that you’re suggesting your customer purchases and the product they’re looking at. Otherwise it can be as successful as convincing someone who’s taken a second hand Toyota Corolla for a test drive that they should purchase a Porsche instead.

Match key features

Up-sell works best when the key features of the product are kept the same.

Be brand aware

For some products, a customer considering a particular brand is more likely to up-sell to products by the same brand. This is relevant for cross sell as well. Sure, that Canon lens does fit the model of Sony camera your customer’s looking at, but they are much more likely to purchase a Sony lens for their Sony camera. If they’re considering a Nokia phone you’ll probably have more luck up-selling them to the next model up also by Nokia.

Benefits count

When trying to persuade your customer to spend more, make sure you clearly spell out the benefits of upgrading from what they were originally considering.

How to cross-sell

Choose carefully

Certain products work better than others for cross-sell. Think like your local supermarket.

Watch the price

Cross-sell works better when the suggested items are half price or lower than the item being purchased.

Relate

Products that naturally go together work better for cross sell.

Higher price

Cross sell tends to be more effective when the original product is higher priced or requires more thought. Cross sell is less successful when trying to convince a customer to spend extra when they were going to buy a lower cost item.

Closing The Sale

Close the Sale

Empathy

Empathy is an intimate understanding of the feelings, thoughts, and motives of the other person, the prospect or the customer. That's why empathy is of prime importance in selling. Empathy is putting yourself into the prospect's shoes. It's knowing and feeling what your prospect is feeling. It's knowing exactly how to proceed depending on the information the prospect has given you.

Until you develop empathy for your customers, until you develop the skill of calling for and getting a favourable agreement that sales people call consummation, you probably won't make it in selling. The customer should sense that you understand and care about helping them solve their problems, not that you are just looking for a sale.

As a salesperson, you must truly believe that you can satisfy the prospect's needs, you must see the benefits, features, and limitations of your product or service from your prospect's view; you must weigh things on the prospect's scale of values, not your own, you must realize what is important to the prospect.

Focusing on your prospect enables you to answer the crucial question in any selling situation: When should you close the sale?

Watch for signs that a deal is near

There's a certain electricity in the air when the prospect is ready to go ahead, but here are some positive buying signs to watch for:

The prospects have been moving along at a smooth pace, and suddenly they slow the pace way down. They're making their final analysis or rationalizing the decision.

They speed up the pace. They're excited to move ahead. Suddenly, they start asking lots of questions. Like anyone else, they ask questions only about things that interest them.

They ask questions about general terms of purchase before they settle on one particular model. Some people immediately start asking questions about initial investment, delivery, and so on. They feel safe doing this because they know you can't sell them everything. If they ask these questions after you know exactly what they want, it's positive stimulus.

Go for a test close after you get positive stimulus. If you think that your customers are ready to buy, try a test question to make sure you are reading the stimulus correctly. As you get more experience in selling, you will become more proficient at reading body language and other buying signals..

Don't shorten the sales process

Some people start relying so much on positive readings that they short cut other vital steps such as qualifying or demonstration. When you shorten the overall selling cycle, it's hard to go back and restore the steps you skipped. Invariably, shortcutting steps causes you to lose many sales. Although it is important to become better at knowing when to close the sale, each prospect should get your full presentation to make sure you don't come up short at the end.

When you ask a question from which you expect an answer confirming that the prospect wants to go ahead with the purchase, you want one of two things to happen:

- The prospect gives you a yes or an answer that indirectly confirms their desire to go ahead with the sale.

- The prospect gives you an objection or asks for more information to enable them to make a -decision.

If you start talking before the prospect answers, you lose control of the negotiations. And you gain nothing. You have neither a confirmation to go ahead nor an objection; you wasted your attempt to consummate the sale.

Would you like delivery on the 10th or the 20th? They pause to think when would be the best time to have the product delivered. You get uncomfortable with the silence and start thinking that they don't want it. You panic and say, Okay, how about if I give you another 5% off? When the total investment wasn't what the prospect was considering in the first place. That's why you always wait for them to respond before you speak, after asking your consummation question, and why it is so important to keep quiet after you ask your final consummation question. If you have a big mouth, this would be the time to put your foot in it (literally) to keep yourself quiet.

If you start looking around or fidgeting, you distract the customer and let them know how uncomfortable you are. Neither of these scenarios helps you move toward a successful consummation. Try to focus your stress in a way that they will not see or recognize it as a nervous action. For example, recite the ABCs backward to yourself, or wiggle your toes — they can't see that, either. Your stress-release can be that simple.

Lead Generation

Lead Generation

While some sales organizations subscribe to the belief that the "quantity" of leads matters most, others place greater value on the "quality" of sales leads.

However attention must go on both the quantity and quality of leads generated. An effective sales organization must maintain a robust network of active sales leads as a means to generate substantive results and increased value for their companies.

Effective lead generation includes proper emphasis placed upon the lead generation process including qualifying methods, strategies to foster product demand, recognition of the significance of differentiation, and an intense focus on customer relationship management (CRM), recognizing that customers tend to buy from people they like.

Total Cost of Ownership Closing Technique

Total Cost of Ownership Closing Technique

Don’t talk about price but talk about the total cost of ownership like service, replacement, quality and so on.

Then compare this cost against that of competitors.

It is often good to scale this price to annual, monthly or weekly cost, where the overall cost may appear scarily high.

Examples

Other systems may seem cheaper, but when you take into account installation, maintenance and the lifetime of the product, this system is about half the price!

Because we are so confident about the reliability of our product, we charge only half the price of our competitors. That means the monthly cost is far less.

If you buy a competing product you'll be replacing it in two years. Our product will last you twice that.

People often focus on the immediate price and miss the longer term cost that may be incurred. The Total Cost of Ownership Closing Technique works by comparing costs over time rather than up-front payments. If possible, this can be put into effect with staged payments.

Of course you do need a more reliable product if you are going to offer lower service costs. It also helps to have evidence of superior quality.

The Voice of the Customer (VoC)

The Voice of the Customer

Quality can be defined as meeting customer needs and providing superior value. Meeting customer needs requires that those needs be understood. The Voice of the Customer is the term to describe the stated and unstated customer needs or requirements.

Up to a few years ago, when companies wanted to know what their customers were thinking, they just asked. It sounds simple enough, but it was anything but. Companies painstakingly pulled together a large random sampling of their customers and then overwhelmed them with dozens of questions about anything they could cram into a half-hour telephone survey. They mailed out questionnaires they hoped customers would fill out and return. They brought a handful of customers together for focus group sessions that could last several hours. Then along came the internet, and companies embraced email and the web to poll their customers without incurring high phone or postage costs.

In any case, collecting customer feedback was a massive undertaking that few companies did more than once a year and response rates were typically very low. Survey fatigue was rampant, mostly because surveys were not customer-friendly: They were absurdly long and structured with the company's interests and not the customer's in mind.

Today, those outdated methods are too slow and infrequent and don't go nearly deep enough to keep up with modern business pressures.

That's why companies today are turning to Voice of the Customer (VOC) solutions.

The Voice of the customer is a term used in business and Information Technology to describe the in-depth process of capturing a customer's expectations, preferences and aversions. Specifically, the Voice of the Customer is a market research technique that produces a detailed set of customer wants and needs, organized into a hierarchical structure, and then prioritized in terms of relative importance and satisfaction with current alternatives. Voice of the Customer studies typically consist of both qualitative and quantitative research steps. They are generally conducted at the start of any new product, process, or service design initiative in order to better understand the customer’s wants and needs, and as the key input for new product definition.

Much has been written about this process, and there are many possible ways to gather the information like focus groups, individual interviews, contextual inquiry, ethnographic techniques, etc. But all involve a series of structured in-depth interviews, which focus on the customers’ experiences with current products or alternatives within the category under consideration. Needs statements are then extracted, organized into a more usable hierarchy, and then prioritized by the customers.

It is critical that the product development core team own and are highly involved in this process. They must be the ones who take the lead in defining the topic, designing the sample, generating the questions for the discussion guide, either conducting or observing and analyzing the interviews, and extracting and processing the needs statements.

Voice of the Customer Initiatives

- A detailed understanding of the customer’s requirements

- A common language for the team going forward

- Key input for the setting of appropriate design specifications for the new product or service

- A highly useful springboard for product innovation.

Qualities of Desirable Voice of Customer Metrics

Credibility: How widely accepted is the measure? Does it have a good track record of results? Is it based on a scientifically and academically rigorous methodology? Will management trust it? Is there proof that it is tied to financial results?

Reliability: Is it a consistent standard that can be applied across the customer lifecycle and multiple channels?

Precision: Is it specific enough to provide insight? Does it use multiple related questions to deliver greater accuracy and insight?

Accuracy: Is the measurement right? Is it representative of the entire customer base, or just an outspoken minority? Do the questions capture self-reported importance or can they derive importance based on what customers say? Does it have an acceptable margin of error and realistic sample sizes?

Actionability: Does it provide any insight into what can be done to encourage customers to be loyal and to purchase? Does it prioritize improvements according to biggest impacts?

Ability to Predict: Can it project the future behaviors of the customer based on their satisfaction?

The Socratic Selling Method

The Socratic Selling Method

Socratic Method:  A method of teaching or discussion, as used by Socrates, in which one asks a series of easily answered questions that inevitably lead the answerer to a logical conclusion.

- Respect the customer

- Help the customer think
- Help the customer make decisions.

The most common complaint about sales people is, from both customers and sales managers is that sales people simply talk too much. And since most of us do indeed talk too much, what do you think the second most frequent complaint we hear about sales people would be? Sales people don't listen.

One simple way to combat both of these short comings is to integrate the Socratic Selling Method into our transactions. We can trace its origins all the way back to 400 BC! That's when Socrates, the famous philosopher from Athens, first introduced the art of collaborative debate or asking easily answered questions to help someone come to a logical conclusion.

The customer owns the past.

The customer has no stake in the future – until the past has been dealt with.
Help the customer tell the story.

We learned early on in our selling careers that the person asking the questions has control. It's just that most of us only take the time to learn questions that help us land the customer on a particular unit and close the deal. (remember the ABC: always be closing) These are questions that our customers perceive as only serving us, not them. With Socratic questioning, each question draws us and our customer closer. We get a better understanding of how best to serve our customer. They get a feeling of being valued and understood. We both join our strengths in a collaborative effort to satisfy their needs. The result is a less stressful, much less combative, and much shorter (time wise) transaction.

Here's what's involved:

First, we need to open the transaction with what's called a "Socratic opener". Typically, this occurs right after our greeting and it gives notice our intention of serving our customer's needs and not ours. If they mention a product/service they are interested in, we say, "Mr. Customer, I'm fully prepared to discuss the xxx with you, so first let me get your perspective on it, that way we can focus our time together on the things that interest you the most."

If they don't have a particular product/service in mind, we can modify it this way, "Mr. Customer, I'm fully prepared to help you make the best choice, the one that's right for you. So, first let me get your feelings about your needs, and that way we can focus our time together on the things that interest you the most."

By announcing we are "prepared," we demonstrate that we are responsible and competent. By acting responsibly, we begin the building of our own credibility. By inviting our customer to tell us what is important to them, we show them that we value their time and their input. We also begin the transaction in a collaborative manner. By stating we want to focus the time spent together on what they think is important, we give our customer the control most buyers long for. We also tell them that we won't be wasting their time.

Next, we need to help them put more of their information out on the table by using Socratic probes. Socratic probes are nothing more than easily answered questions. "Tell me more...", or "What else should I know about...", or "Why is that important to you?", or "How will you be using...", or "What else would help me understand...", or "Could you please expound upon...". These questions are also very easy for us to ask. As long as we have the front part of the question committed to memory, the rest of the question just sort of asks itself based on what our customer has already told us.

Another important aspect of encouraging our customers to share their wants, needs, fears, and goals is that, once they do, our solutions will be more credible. Now our suggestions will be much more appealing because they have been tailored specifically to them. By allowing our customer to do the majority of the talking, we also get to pace two of their most basic human needs. We get a chance to help them feel valued and understood.

Another benefit of Socratic probes is creating urgency. Often salespeople still use time of the month, sales quotas, or expiring incentives to create urgency. What most salespeople do not realize is that many of their customers perceive these "reasons" as only benefiting the dealership and salesperson ("Do I really have to care about your sales quotas to get a good deal?") or, even worse, as artificial sales ploys ("How long have you guys had rebates now? Twenty years? Isn't it mysterious how they always seem to be 'just about to end' right about the time I decide to buy a car?"). The customer goes along with them, of course, as they do with most other dated sales practices, as simply something they have to put up with to buy a car.

We can use Socratic probes to create truly relevant urgency. We can ask: "Why now?", or "You said you weren't in a hurry, right? That's interesting. So what made you visit a dealership at this time?", or "What makes this urgent?", or "What made you get started today?". This is information we can use later to help create real urgency that is relevant to our customer. These are our customer's reasons to do business based on our customer's needs. Now to create urgency, we only have to remind our customer about what they said was urgent enough to make them set foot on a car lot.

Major buying decisions are made emotionally first and then we'll grab whatever logic is available at the time to justify the emotional decision we've already made. We can get a handle on what our customers are feeling by asking questions like: "What worries you the most about this?", or "I can tell you're frustrated by this, how come?", or "What do you want to avoid this time?", or "Why is this important to you?", or "How will this affect you and/or your company?", or "How does that make you feel?".

I suppose now would be a good time to remind ourselves that in order for these questions to have their desired effect, we need to listen to what our customer is telling us. The skill of Active Listening is one that most sales people ignore and is one of the skill sets that separates the good sales person from the truly excellent sales professional.

The four elements to Active Listening are:

- Attentive Body Language (head nods, eye contact, smiling, etc.)

- Verbal Attends (small grunts like "uh huh", "okay", "sure", "I see", etc.)
- Leading Questions (open-ended questions that encourage them to talk more)
- Restate (paraphrasing back what our customer has said to us).

Active Listening is not simply waiting for our turn to talk. It's not interrupting them to show that we already know what they are talking about. It's not interrupting them to interject how our product or service satisfies the need they just shared with us. It's not anything more than simply allowing our customer to completely share with us their story, then playing that story back to them, and gaining clarification or confirmation by asking: "Do I have it right?", or "Did I hear you correctly?", or "Am I getting the picture?", or "How's that sound?", or "Did I miss anything?".

You haven’t listened until you can show you have listened.

We continue to ask the questions we've all been taught while landing them on a specific product/service, performing a good feature/benefit presentation.

Then we can advance the decision making process by asking easily answered questions like: "If you were to go ahead with this, how would you like your insurance agent updated with the new vehicle info?", or "If you decided to proceed, when would you like the xxx installed?", or "If you were shown three compelling reasons to do business with a particular dealership, would you be willing to at least keep an open mind?", or "On a scale of one to ten, ten meaning you love it and are ready to own it, one meaning you hate it and wouldn't even take it if it were given to you, where would you say you are?", then, "What would have to occur to make it a ten?".

In these questions we reduce the pressure by using conditional words like: if, were to, and would. We also reduce the pressure by eliminating words like: us, I, me, and we. We can make them even easier to answer by excluding our product brand or dealership name and by refraining from the use of words like: now, or today. When they answer us, we can assume the "us", "our product", "our dealership", and "today". Besides, we'll have plenty of time to be "more concrete" later on if the need arises.

In the negotiations, our goal is to keep the process one of collaboration and not one of confrontation. We can start by stating their interests through summarizing what our customer has told us concerning their wants, needs, time urgency, and feelings. We get their clarification or confirmation by asking: "Did I get it right?", or "How's that sound?", or "Did I miss anything?". Then we make our proposal based on what they've told us, making sure we tie the recommendations to benefits and tailor them to our customer. We then seek their approval by asking: "What's your feelings about this?".

If an objection comes up, we can give them an answer tailored specifically to them by what they have stated to us already. If a tailored answer isn't clear to us, we can get clarification by helping our customer think it through by asking: "Why is that important to you?", or "Why is that important right now?", or "Why do you ask?", or "What is it you're wanting to discuss?".

If they make a counter offer that is not acceptable, we can preserve the collaborative environment by

-          stating again their interests (their wants, needs, time urgency, and feelings)
-          restating their position (whatever their counter offer is)
-          saying, "It's important to me that you understand why what you're asking is a bit more than they are able to do."
-          giving the reasons why we can't do what they are asking
-          saying, "May I share with you a solution I think will be acceptable to everyone?"
-          making a counter proposal.

Don’t negotiate just to get the sale. Negotiate to upgrade the sale for yourself and the customer.

Help the customer make the buying decision. Regain the momentum by summarising. Make a diary statement. “In order to do this for you, let’s get out our diaries and schedule the next steps.” Specify the next steps:

 

-          Actions the customer offers to take.
-          Actions the customer wants you to take.
-          Actions you offer to take.
-          Actions you want the customer to take.
-          Attach dates to all action steps.

Time is the recorder of responsibility.  Close on a point in time.

As with any new skill, the Socratic Selling Method requires lots of practice and refining to our vocabulary, personality, and philosophy of doing business. Making the sales transaction one of collaboration and not one of confrontation is possible when we engage our customers in the process. By asking easily answered questions, we not only gain insight into what our customer's dominant buying motives are, but we also help our customers feel valued and understood. By taking the extra time to get to know and engage our customer, we actually dramatically speed up the buying process.

We've all heard this before, "Our customers don't care how much we know until they know how much we care." Socratic Selling gives us the opportunity to demonstrate to our clients that we really are different and that we actually do care.

 

Why a Sales Director is important

Why a great Sales Director is important

 

 

 

What’s the best? A team of excellent salespeople with an average manager or a team of average salespeople with an excellent manager?

Many will choose for the team of excellent salespeople:

•"It's salespeople — not managers — who develop and nurture the customer relationships that drive sales."

•"Replacing one average manager is easier than replacing an entire team of average salespeople."
•"An excellent salesperson doesn't need managing."

Others will argue for the excellent manager:

•"Excellent managers consistently recruit the best sales talent. 'First-class hires first-class; second-class hires third-class.'"

•"Excellent managers motivate excellent salespeople, develop average salespeople to make them excellent, and keep the entire team engaged and aligned."
•"Excellent salespeople make sales today, but eventually they retire, get promoted, or get wooed away by a competitor." 

Clearly, the best sales forces have both excellent salespeople and excellent managers. A team of excellent salespeople will win sales and make this year's goal, regardless of who the manager is. But the success of that team will be short-lived. Eventually, an average manager will bring all of the salespeople that he manages down to his level. On the other hand, an excellent manager will bring excellence to all her territories. An excellent manager may inherit average salespeople, but in the long run he will counsel, coach, motivate, or replace salespeople until the entire team is excellent.

Companies that have winning sales forces start with excellent managers. Most sales organizations focus considerable energy to build a team of excellent salespeople, yet regrettably, they focus too little attention on building the management team, which is truly "the force behind the sales force." Consider the following evidence.

Role definition: Most companies have a job description for salespeople, and many have a defined sales process specifying how salespeople should work with customers. But too many companies don't do a good job of defining the more varied responsibilities of managers. Managers must play three roles, people, customer, and business managers, so they get pulled from all sides. We hear all the time about "role pollution" in the manager's job. Without role clarity, managers execute tasks that are urgent or within their comfort zone, rather than focusing on what's most important for driving long-term performance.

Selection: Companies devote substantial energy to recruiting the best sales talent, but when it comes to managers, most simply select their best salespeople for the job. Yet what it takes to succeed as a salesperson is very different from what it takes to succeed as a manager. Unless you select salespeople who have strong managerial tendencies, in addition to respectable sales skills, your sales management team will be average at best.

Development: Too often, when sales managers come into their jobs after having been successful salespeople, their company expects them to know how to manage with minimal guidance. Most of the companies spend training their sales forces every year, very little gets directed towards sales managers. The result is inconsistent competency across most management teams, as new managers struggle to make the critical transition from salesperson, and experienced managers can't keep up with ever-changing job demands.

Support: Sales managers typically rank third, behind salespeople and senior sales leadership, when it comes to prioritizing sales force support initiatives (such as access to support personnel and resources, and data and tools that enable good decision making and increase efficiency). Rarely do managers get enough support resources for getting everything done — and done well.

Sales managers serve as key points of leverage for driving long-term sales performance. It's a mistake to underinvest in this group. By building a winning sales management team, you can capitalize on a high-impact, tangible opportunity to drive sales effectiveness and top and bottom line results.