((atloud))

Sales people are sales people. They are there to make sales. Make sales closure speeches. Ask for the money. But most of the sales people are not that good when proving the value of their products (at the “Proving Value” sales step) eventhough they may be very good at finding facts about the need.

“The best sales people are the ones that has salesability on top of technical knowledge.”

If that’s the case, the best thing to do is to associate the sales person with a techie. Because they technically know everything about your products and its competition. They adore what they’re dealing with everyday.

But beware that they may be disruptive at fact finding process, because of their passion. If the sales person can manage this, manage the whole conversation and pass the ball to techie at the proving value part, sales is mostly done. Be sure that at negotiation, techie will drop put anyways.

To succeed, the sales manager should mix and match these people together for sales calls. Techies are especially necessary if the customer is technical as well. It was always easy for me to close the sales by leveraging techies.

And why is that? It’s because…

Techies build trust and rapport. Since customers do not see techies putting effort to make sales, customers trust them not looking at their pockets. And with their technical knowledge they build rapport as well.

Techies are passionate. Customers are impressed by passion. The passion, the belief that comes with passion makes customers believe also.

Techies cannot lie. Because their minds work with numbers and analytic solutions only. Customers believe techies because if they lie, generally they show it up unconsciously with physical clue.

Techies want to help. As I mentioned at my previous posts, helping client is the mentality that a sales person should have. Techies have this by nature. And the customer is there asking for help to solve his problem.

Techies are Sales Angels. Angels that whisper the solutions to the problems.

Use them for making sales, or learn all the technical stuff yourself and bring your positive motives with you to the sales calls.

Technorati Tags: Sales steps, proving value, fact finding, sales management, products

When I was browsing my notes on my computer I come up with the following image. I can’t remember from where I got it, so apologies for not mentioning the person who draw this. It’s basically marketing activities but like the one I wrote about sales (here), it puts the marketing activities with a funnel of measurability, broadness, and interactivity with the clients.

Only thing that seems not right for me is the end part. In my opinion, all these marketing activities do not create customers but clients. Clients become customers only when they pay (not buy!, pay).

All these activities can be used at the same time or some can be selected and used depending on your marketing strategy. It also depends on many other things like how much budget you have, your resources, etc. Below you can see a very simple marketing cycle focused on online only. Offline part is more or less the same thing with different nomenclature maybe.

For small businesses; the activities that can be done for no or very small cost are mainly, PR, Direct Mailing, SEO, Website, Trade Shows, Opt-in Emails, and F2F (Face to face) meetings. Most of the time, small businesses do not do these all but struggle with daily challenges. This is because they do not set a solid strategy that they need to follow. Thus they mostly find their clients through references, and try to keep them in portfolio. They spend so much effort on keeping clients, that they do not have time to invest in finding more.

Small businesses should;

1. Plan a solid Marketing Strategy
2. Define communication strategy
3. Pick up the less costly, most effective; targeted, marketing medium
4. Put measurements and measure
5. Then optimise as shown at the image above.

References are good, and important, but creating many many qualified prospects will definitely help Small Businesses spread the risk of having hard times in sales.

Sales begins with the clients generated here. Depending on how much qualified the prospects are, the sales cycle can be short or long. It eases the sales peoples lives.

Once I was managing a reseller channel. Most of the resellers I had was selling by references. One of them was very passionate about developing his business with our products. We chose a different lead generation model for them together. Besides the existing marketing model, we put outbound call center operation to the model to reach more and more potential customers. With even three Telesales people, in just one year, they reached more clients than they did for the last 15 years. Although they converted a very small percentage of the clients they reached to customers, they made more revenue than that they did for 15 years (for our business line only). It was costly, but it was effective. It worked for them, it worked for us. Our products were suitable for it. They copied our marketing strategy and changed a bit for their business size. Later on they started web, SEO, Opt-in emailing, and events. They still do. Now they’re more bigger that they started working with a PR agency.

The more clients you have, the more opportunities are there on the table. The more opportunities you have, the more sales is on the table.

Technorati Tags: marketing funnel, planning, marketing strategy, clients, customers, generating clients, lead generation, lead generation model, communication strategy, strategy, media planning, media, targeted marketing, measurement, measurable, optimisation

Well, you’re trying to sell something to someone. It’s normal that you’re just focused on your business, getting prepared, planning, making a research on the customer, how you’ll approach etc. I’ve mentioned earlier at my first post that;

“No customer wants to be sold to, they want to buy.”

So if you look from the other way around, meaning that if you put yourself at your potential customer’s shoes, things are a bit different. Understanding this will definitely help you close your sales or create sales if there’s no need in place.

To be more clear, there are “states” of the potential customer at which you can use for your own good.

1. Equilibrium   : Business as usual
2. Recognition  : Recognition of a business challange or opportunity
3. Exploration  : Explore possible directions
4. Definition     : Define direction
5. Evaluation    : Evaluate alternatives
6. Selection      : Select alternative
7. Negotiation  : Negotiation with the potential supplier
8. Order            : Place order
9. Install          : Install, implement or execute
10. Realize         : Realize the business benefits

At Equilibrium state, the business is running as usual for the client and there’s no need for purchase. Then why did we put this as part of the sales process? At most of the calls you’ll do, this may be the state the client is in. At this state, you’re in position to disturb the state, create a need or want. Normally, at this state the client even is not in need to give you an appointment, so you better have a very shocking opening to get his attention followed by a statement that leads this attention to interest. The true sales cycle starts when this equilibrium state is disturbed and leads the client to Recognition state.

After you create the interest, and break the code of Equilibrium state, the client will now be in state of recognition. Recognition of a problem, an issue, a challenge in short or better an opportunity. And this is the point where the real sales cycle starts. A well prepared, well equipped sales person can do this more easily the the unprepared. Knowing the client’s industry, what and how he does business definitely helps. An insider info is golden.

At this point the potential customer is in search of exploring his options. He may be in difficulty of achieving his revenue or profit targets, or may be in need of increasing efficiency at his organization or may be looking in ways to lower his costs with some software. If you’re successful enough to create the “Pain” there, and luckily if you’re the only person that “understands” this, you’re half way to sales closure. You’ll be the only point he’ll be exploring for solutions.

At sales the most important thing is to “help” the potential customer. Helping to define the problems before designing the solution is necessary. Best sales people spend most of their effort on defining the problem. Solutions are there already (your products). But to position it right you need a good definition to the problem that the potential customer approves. Help customer define the challenge or the opportunity. Imagine that you’ll take a vacation, will you just drive to it or before going out for it, will you define the need for this vacation and then do drive to it? You possibly will first define it depending on your needs and wants (a silent vacation near the shore, a more social vacation with clubbing plans at nights etc.)

“If I had 20 days to solve a problem, I would take 19 days to define it” — Albert Einstein

At the Evaluation state, the potential customer knows what he wants for sure and start evaluating alternatives. If you’re the person that really understands it, and if you can offer the best options (price etc.) or the best solution that no other can give, you’re the man. So when putting the definition to the challenge or opportunity, it’s no harm that it includes something that only you can give to client.

A clever client will look for alternatives anyways and you should always be there near him to help because otherwise it’s always possible him be confused by your competition. So at this Selection stage, the best thing to do is to have the very best tools in hand, or the best hand if possible. At the least, the customer should believe that you have the best hand.

Even if the customer knows that you have the best hand, he’ll negotiate. If you do not know his situation well, you cannot negotiate well. You’ll be in position to give away from your benefits. This is the position where WIN-WIN balance moves to client’s benefits more (WIN-WIN will be discussed seperately). In contrast, if you know that he needs you, you can get whatever you want.

When you get the order, you’re almost done. The sales is never closed unless you’re paid. Normally, most of the sales people thinks that when he gets the order the sales is closed. No, it’s not. You have to collect. Now most of the smart companies define a bonus system where the sales person is being paid only if the customer pays, and that’s right.

The stages where most of the sales people are worst at is after this stage. Most of the time, when the order is taken, sales person immediately focuses on new sales opportunities in hand. It’s wrong. Either the customer is big or small, you’ll need to sell more to him someday and if the customer is not satisfied with you, he won’t try you again. You have to HELP him still. Eventhough it may not be the main responsibility of the sales person, implementation of the solution, execution of the project must be followed up. Client’s feedback should regularly be taken. Interest should be shown.

And as the last state of the customer, they want to see the outcome or realize the benefits of the solution they paid for. This is mostly about the product or the solution itself. Sales person should not set the expectation higher that what he has, otherwise the customer will feel like he’s cheated and will not buy again. Other than that, sales person has not so much to do at this state.

Knowing the states the customer lives helps sales people as much as the 6 steps sales process. This way, the sales person will be more capable of putting things right. The most important part in all these is to put the definition or diagnosis right. If you do it well, you’ll be better in designing, packaging and marketing the solution.

“Stop selling. Start helping.” — Zig Ziglar

Technorati Tags: Selling, States, Sales Steps, Solutions, Products, Designing Solutions, Defining problems, defining challenges, defining opportunities, opportunity, help, helping clients

In my first post I wrote about the 6 Steps Sales Plan. With the 6 Steps Sales Plan, you follow the steps to

1. Generate Lead (Preparation and Planning)
2. Do Initial Qualification by making the first contact (Approach)
3. Do detailed discovery (Fact Finding)
4. Make solution definition (Proving Value)
5. Make a proposal (Recommendation)
6. Do negotiation and make a closure (Close)

and how many you have in each stage defines the Sales Funnel or Sales Pipeline.

Normally, the healthy funnel shape should be like the one above. i.e. You need to invest a lot of time to generate a lot of sales leads (opportunities) but at the end you’ll see that not most of the leads you generated will convert to sales or in other words be closed.

Also the shape of the funnel will not be like the one above if you do not convert between stages as necessary. I mean, there will be times when you’ll make a lot of meetings with customers or a lot of proposals and negotiations and the closure will not happen. So the shape at stages 4 and 5 will be larger than it should be and you’ll start thinking of how you can convert the customer to the next stage. Conversion Ratio is another topic and I’m leaving it to some other post for now.

What I want to discuss here is how to quantify the sales funnel and why to do it. Why is easy… It is just for you to be able to forecast what you’ll generate this month, next month or the following months.

Say that you have opportunities of quantity and amount shown at the table below. At this example we see that you have 200 opportunities at stage 1 at which most probably you don’t know its worth since you didn’t get in touch with the potential customer yet. And 150 opportunities worth $ 500.000, etc.

The probability of closure of the sales for the first stage should be 0%. For stage 2 onwards the probabilities may change depending on the nature of the business you’re running.

The definition of the sales probabilities should be clearly defined depending on the actions at each step of the sales process. Forexample you can say that we’re selling something that can be sold at the phone though not easy. We can put 10% for the telephone call to the customer who’s saying “I’m interested at buying your services”. We can put 20% for the field visit to the customer at which there’s face to face interaction. 40% for the stage that customer says “I understand your point of how you can help me, and I need some time to think about it”. 60% if you send the offer to the customer and 80% for the negotiation stages.

As stated earlier, the actions that define the probability of sales depends on the nature of the business and the product you are selling. Besides there’s time dependency that customer informs you (customer can say that “I’ll buy for sure but not this month” and that is pipeline of the month customer stated).

PS: One important thing you can say is that “how can you know the amount at just 10% probability stage?”.. It’s salesman’s suggestion only, feeling, gut feeling. You cannot exactly determine it but more or less the salesman has that opinion thru experience.

With these information in hand you can easily multiply probability with the amount and sum it up to find that months’ forecast ($ 270.000 in this example).

To be able to track your Sales Funnel or Sales Pipeline, you need to have a CRM application at which your salesmen will enter the leads they generate and a rewarding program for salesmen to enter data . This is the point I think where CRM differs from that of Contact Management applications.

As the days go by, you’ll be able to recognise these revenues and generating new opportunities everyday and will have a clear picture of what revenue you’ll generate in month 1, 2, 3 etc.

The size of the pipeline is as important as how healthy the shape is… It’s a different discussion for a different post…

Technorati Tags: CRM, forecast, Forecasting, sales funnel, sales pipeline, sales plan, sales probability, sales stages

6 Steps Sales Plan defines the process to be followed during the sales call. Sales method may differ (Telesales, account visit etc.), even the number of steps may differ (6,7 or 10 Steps) depending on how much you break down but the process never changes.

Some people do it by nature with no proper training, and some follows it as a process. But at the end of the day you should follow it anyhow to make the sales. Every step is important in itself and none of them can be ignored.

Basically, the steps to successful sales are:

1. Preparation and Planning
2. Approach
3. Fact Finding
4. Proving Value
5. Recommendation
6. Close

in order.

I’ll dig in each and every step of the sales plan in future posts but in short these steps can be explained as follows:

Preparation and Planning
At this step you focus on knowing the potential customer. Who, what, how, where questions needs to be clearly answered. Who is the potential customer, who are the competition, which market are they in, how does the market doing, how does the potential customer doing etc etc. This is a “get ready” stage. You need to “get equipped” before diving in. You need a plan, a scheme, an arrangement before going to potential customer.

Approach
This is the time you got in contact with the potential customer. At this stage you need to do proper introduction (self, company name, purpose of call etc.). You need to make Interest Creating Remark (ICR) and you need to qualify your Authority.

Fact Finding
For me, this is mainly Active Listening. This is a step where you “uncover needs” of the potential customer. This stage is so important that it defines how you introduce, how you position your products, services and solutions.

Proving Value
This is the stage where you re-establish the need of the potential customer, introduce your products, services and solutions, and how these will make their life easier. It’s about putting the answers to potential customers’ problems which you defined at Fact Finding stage.

Recommendation
Now the potential customer knows your solutions and it’s time to say “I recommend you”. When you say it, it’s probable that you may get objections, concerns etc and this is the right time to overcome these. At this stage you’ll also negotiate solutions and maybe price although it’s mainly close stage subject.

Close
“Give me your money” stage. How you do it depends on mostly you (your most comfortable closing technique) as well as the potential customer.

If you follow the sales plan, and execute it well, you can sell. But always remember that

“No customer wants to be sold to, they want to buy.”

It is about how good you are to determine the need, or create one, and how good you are at solving it.

Also, it needs practice. You should try try and try, and get a lot of NO! NO! NO! s. How you overcome those objections will sharpen you. Persistence and consistency are the key.

Technorati Tags: sales, sales planning, selling, 6 steps, closing, closure, planning, preparation, recommendation, approach, fact finding, proving value, active listening,