SalesGrok

Are you ready to Propose?

I’m a huge fan of Wendy Weiss, AKA the Queen of Cold Calling. She has transformed thousands of amateurs aimlessly “dialing for dollars” into maniacally “customer” focused professionals. I aspire!

The other day I ran across a post where Wendy talked about best practices on managing the proposal process titled “Stop Writing Proposals and Close more Sales”. Totally agree with her, why take the time to propose when you're not completely sure you and the customer "fit".

How many times have you heard Salespeople answer the question, "what did they think of the proposal?" with "I'm not sure, they're not returning my calls" or "they're still reviewing it"? Weak!

So I'd like to take it a step further and "propose" a different approach that will likely be more valuable for both you and the customer. This is especially critical to those selling products or services that deliver substantial value to your customers (think big!).

It’s called the “Pre-Proposal review", a process whereby you and the prospect, ideally your sponsor, champion or advocate, walk through a draft proposal in real-time, preferably in person. This concept has been around a good while…I can’t remember whether I picked it up from Don McNamara or Tom Freese?!

It takes a bit more work on the front-end to develop and execute a “Pre-Proposal Review”, but it's absolutely worth it. Not only will you get invaluable feedback and guidance, you’ll also be in a great position to confirm the fit with the client’s goals and budget as well as what the go forward process looks like. It's also possible to convert an early sale by asking for the business now!

To develop a Pre-Proposal review, you'll take the high-level from your boilerplate quote or proposal template. The key components of the review include the customer's goals (align the vision), solution requirements (confirm the fit), financials (value proposition/ROI) and an execution plan (timeline and resources). Remember, high-level! If you're over five slides or pages, trim it down!

To the team at Tinderbox – Dustin, Adam & Drew – in a perfect world, Sales pros would all get access to your solution because it truly provides an informative, interactive experience for the customer while maintaining engagement and a modicum of control for the Salesperson (and Sales Management!).

This is the goal of the Pre-Proposal review. If your proposal is important. If it’s a “game-changer” for your customer. If you want to maintain a consultative relationship with your client…DO NOT JUST SEND THE PROPOSAL AND WAIT (HOPE).

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Your Sales Performance Plan

We’re well into the New Year. As of today, you, Mr. and Ms. Salesperson have 237 working days to exceed your annual quota and that’s assuming you sell only in the USA! No pressure, right?!

The real question is…how are you going to make your number this year? It’s all about setting goals and creating a plan to help you get there.

 "If I've got correct goals, and if I keep pursuing them the best way I know how, everything else falls into line. If I do the right thing right, I'm going to succeed."  -CS Lewis

What do your goals look like this year? If you’ve written out your goals and your Sales plan for the year, kudos, now go forth and prosper! If not, here are a few suggestions:

-Look back. What happened last year? What worked, what didn’t? Jot down some notes right now and use hindsight as a guide to improve this year.

-Identify your top (10 or more) goals for the year. Think personal and business. What will bring you the most happiness? What do you need to achieve to feel successful this year? On the business side, employ SMART goals. 

-Build your Sales plan. What’s your number? Break down your annual goal into monthly or quarterly objectives. Then make a plan that helps you measure your progress on a daily basis. Here is a basic template. If you want the whole enchilada, send me a note.

-Execute! Stay focused and deliver, without excuses! 

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I Just Called...

"Hey Dennis, it's ------ with -----. Just following up from our conversation------about helping you basically ------ and help you acquire -------- so just trying to connect with you sometime this week. If you could give me a call back. My phone number is #. Thanks!"

In a business context, when I hear salespeople say the word, I either delete the message or regret picking up the phone. Harsh? Maybe, but most decision makers have bigger and better things to do than "just" talk with a salesperson.

If you find yourself using the word “just” in your dialogue with your prospect or customer, it would serve you well to take the time to think through the goal or objective for your call or meeting and how you are going to add value.

Save "Just" for your personal interactions. Listen to Stevie!

You don't have to have a gigantic Marketing team to accomplish this feat. Your update doesn't have to be a new spec sheet, white paper or webinar...it simply needs to be relevant and targeted to the interests of your prospect.

You might:

• Share a new development with your company or product
• Introduce the executive sponsor to your VP or CEO
• Find relevant news to share
• Follow up on a post or status update 
• Offer additional resources

Wendy Weiss, the queen of cold calling, offers some excellent advice here on how to avoid the "just called" quicksand.

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Social Addiction

My daughter loves soccer and Justice. My son loves Minecraft and Chess. Our friends and family who pay attention, from ongoing conversations to our posts on Facebook, and ask either of them about their passions are met with bright eyes and instant rapport. It seems so simple, pay attention and be interested to connect!

This concept combined with a recent post by SAP's CIO, Oliver Bussman, and reinforcement on Twitter (see below) got me fired up about Social and Sales.

If you are sincerely interested in your customers and prospects, why wouldn't you take a few minutes before your next meeting to…

• Check out their profile and search the company on LinkedIn - how are you connected? do you know her colleagues?
• Look at the last few posts on Twitter - what is she talking about?
• Google their name + company name - any relevant, recent stories?

Our schedules can be ridiculous. Travel here, demo this, forecast that, meeting hell, write a proposal, entertain…on and on. Whatever your burden, I'm telling you right now, there is NO EXCUSE for you not to complete the simple steps above before EACH AND EVERY sales call. Every executive on the planet does not have the time to deal with lightweight, tactical salespeople. They seek value and relevancy at a minimum...getting Social will help you get there.

It must have been 2006 (LinkedIn #309,350) when I first experienced the power of Social in terms of quickly connecting with a prospective customer. Back in the day, I'm preparing for a first call aka "Discovery call" and I do the normal stuff; review the website, look at recent news, peruse the COTB letter of the annual report and I decide to check out LinkedIn and Twitter. It turns out that I was connected with him through a former colleague (we were thick as thieves) and we both were into tennis. You want to talk about building rapport quickly - forgettaboutit! That networked head start led to a killer deal and multiple referrals.

Ever since I've been ADDICTED to checking out what people are up to before I reach out. Let me go out on a limb. It is just silly NOT to use the low hanging fruit resources of Social Media - LinkedIn, duh! Twitter, yeah! Google, absolutely!!

Personally, I feel naked going into a meeting without this information. What about you?

Share your successes, ideas or rebuttals in the comments!

 

Delivering the "Glengarry Leads"

When people ask me what Reachforce does, I often tell them that we provide technology and services to help Marketing deliver the “Glengarry Leads” to sales teams.

Those who have seen the movie get it – interested decision makers, recommenders, or influencers who need and can afford their products and/or services – but I generally reserve this line for seasoned folks since the show behind the reference, Glengarry Glenn Ross, was released in 1992 – ancient times for lots of professionals in the 21^st century! If you’ve not seen the film, get a flavor here (my favorite scene - rated R for language) or peruse the Cliffs Notes here.

And while every salesperson wants “Glengarry Leads” (and every marketer wants to provide them), attracting, identifying, and delivering this level of lead isn’t easy. Here are the top 5 ways to make it happen:

Know thy Customer. If you met your ideal prospect at a dinner party, how long would it take to figure it out? If you have existing customers, which companies in what industries are producing the greatest revenue? What challenges will you help them solve? What is your unique value proposition? Where do prospects go when they are looking for a solution like yours? Understanding your customer will help you create an effective strategy and supporting programs to grow your market share.

Enhance your Sales and Marketing Data. According to SiriusDecisions, for every 1% of data quality improvement marketing can generate 5-6% of incremental revenue. In other words, the quality of your data directly impacts the results of your campaigns and it’s not enough to simply clean your contact and lead databases. And removing duplicates and identifying “unmarketable” contacts is a no-brainer!

In order to take your programs to the next level, you also need to fill white space and title gaps. According to MarketingSherpa’s 2011 B2B Marketing Benchmark report, more than 70% of B2B purchasing decisions involve 3 or more contacts. How confident are you that you are enrolling the right contacts in your campaigns?

Deliver Compelling Content. Ann Handley at MarketingProfs literally wrote the book on content. Content Rules will help you create content to support Customer engagement from awareness to action (A.I.D.A. – another Glengarry gem!)

Execute! A MarketingSherpa B2B survey revealed that 68% of B2B marketers haven’t defined the stages in the Sales funnel. Partner with Sales to gain total alignment on how a lead flows through the funnel to a ‘closed won’ opportunity. If your company has multiple solutions, make sure to include the “post-sale” funnel to re-engage customers in up-sell and cross-sell activities.

Measure and Tune. With every campaign, benchmark expected vs. actual performance. Invest in the activities that provide the highest return on leads and opportunities per dollar. If you consistently track and refine your results, you’ll be unstoppable! CMO.com published a terrific ROI study that can serve as your guide to continuous improvement.

Will there be a sequel to Glengarry Glenn Ross? Based on box office results, it’s doubtful, but as Marketing and Sales professionals, we can keep the film alive by making the “Glengarry leads” a reality.

Marketing Bonus: The next time you see your Sales colleague at the coffee pot you can say, “Put that coffee down! Coffee is for closers only.”

5 cool concepts @ Dreamforce '11

Dreamforce was in a word, “inspirational”! Salesforce.com brought a massive amount of talent, energy, innovation...and money to its annual 9^th annual Users conference, aka “Cloud 9”.

The experience motivated me to highlight and share five (what I consider cool!) concepts with you…

1)      If the rules don’t support your vision, change the game – Salesforce.com has never wavered from its purist approach to cloud computing, delivering release after release of fast, easy and open hosted software. Since 1999, the company has overcome Enterprise-class competition, including Siebel, SAP and Oracle, survived phishing attacks, minimized the threat of downtime issues as well as expanded its core CRM offering through development, acquisitions and the AppExchange, which boasts over 900 applications from more than 450 independent software vendors (983,599 installs as of this post and counting!).

2)      Innovation in the Cloud is just beginning – with 275+ exhibitors, there were so many new companies and technology, and it’s difficult to imagine less than 400 at Dreamforce 2012. I witnessed so many NCTs – next cool things/trends – I’ll save highlights for another post.

3)      The Social Enterprise is real (and a bit scary) - Marc Benioff’s Day 2 keynote presentation on the Social Enterprise says it all. The power of this concept is the ability to get closer to one’s customers – almost intertwined in fact. Think about a centralized view of your prospect’s public activity – LinkedIn, blog posts, tweets within Chatter, Salesforce.com's "private, corporate" social networking interface.  The delicate part of the equation is information overload. Have you looked at your “overdue” activities lately? I’ll bet 10 to 1 that we’ll see an emergence of “filtering” apps to help customer-facing reps separate the “wheat from the chaff”!!

4)      Sales and Marketing functions are converging – It’s a foregone conclusion that the traditional Sales model has been turned on its head – the funnel has flipped! The way customers buy will continue to evolve in such a way that Marketing will continue to increase its influence on purchase behavior and processes. Never has alignment between these functions been more critical than now! Read a bit on Revenue Performance Management ...is it possible that the Chief Revenue Officer will replace the CMO & CSO??

5)      People Rule! – Certainly the venue,agenda (Metallica anyone?!), content and technology play a major role in the quality of any conference, but people are the difference makers. Of the dozens of conferences I’ve attended over the years, Dreamforce seemed to have the greatest “people mojo” on the largest scale – with the right mix of knowledge, experience, social acumen and curiosity. Information distributed in the sessions was fantastic, but I think I learned more through Q&A on the tail end of sessions as well as in deep conversations with peers outside the classroom. This effect was likely strengthened by the Hawaiian opening greeting delivered by Daniel Akaka – hypnotic!

Over my (long and distinguished…;) career in tech, I’ve watched with awe and sometimes trepidation as salesforce.com blazed the path of creation to dominance of the SaaS industry. After Cloud 9, I’m a believer…how about you?

Here are my favorite posts on the DF11 experience and "what happens next"?

Dreamforce 2011 Wrap up: Our 10 Favorite Blogs about #DF11 by Appirio

4 Event Marketing Lessons From @HubSpot's Dreamforce Strategy #DF11 by Hubspot

Eric Schmidt: The Next Facebook will be Social, Mobile & Local by Eloqua

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