The key components of sales success

Many commentators have a view on the question "What makes for a successful sales team?"

Here at Accredit, we believe sales success hinges on three key internal issues (assuming of course that you have something people want to buy and have access to the market you are aiming to serve)

Over the next few weeks we will be discussing our views on what these three key areas are. This week we will focus on introducing them and briefly outlining why we think they are important and essential to sales success.

We believe the 3 components to successful sales enablement are:

1. Message - do you have "sales ready messages" and are they explicit so that both customers and sales people understand them. Think about it as having a "WIIFM" for all audiences
2. Environment - This in our view is a combination of:
1. Process - is it easy for me to sell the product/solution and the customer to buy the product/solution?
2. Motivation - Will our sales people want to sell the product/solution? Typically this is a combination of incentives and sales management (carrot and stick)
3. Support/Culture - Do we know what good looks like and is there coaching support to get the sales people selling? - Again this is all about Sales Management and organisational appetite for improvement and success.
3. Resources - Are your sales people capable of delivering the messages and do they have the skills to turn opportunities into business? How will you know? Typically there are different internal resource skill and knowledge levels and therefore the capability and skill requirements differ depending on who sales people engage with and the sales process they use and of course their confidence and attitude towards their role and their own personal success drivers.

Because of the nature of sales people, if you do not get Message and Environment "right", it does not matter what you do with the Resources; you will fail. It's a bit like training someone to drive an F1 car so they can drive very quickly and then giving them a Smart Car and telling them to drive in the centre of London. They will not use the new skills because there is no relevance to what they actually have to do.

Sales Management is also key - Sales Management can make or break any sales enablement process. The sales guys need to be confident that their SM can coach them, support them, motivate them - indeed help them to be successful. It is about Leadership not just Management. Do you have SMs that can do this?

So what does this mean for us as sales people and sales managers?

• We believe you should begin with your Messaging components, i.e. Collateral. This is on the basis that until you have the collateral finalised how do you know what you want the sales people to ask, understand, say etc?
• Next come the Environmental components. You need to ensure that your sales people have the tools and processes to make it easy to sell (and for the customer to buy) and that you have defined what good looks like for the sales process and how you measure it.
• The tools you need to use to ensure success at each stage of the sales cycle and how they are going to drive success are for example:
• Opportunity management
• Account Development
• Sales Planning
• Forecasting and Pipeline Management
• Finally, and only when you have excellent Messages and the right Environment should you tackle the Resources element. By this we mean it is pointless training in new skills and knowledge unless the other elements are in place first. Often we are asked to train sales people and once we commence understanding what we are getting into we find the first two vital components are missing.
• The starting point for the Resources element has to be in sales management. You not only need to train sales people you also need to include checks and balances to ensure sales people are continually assessed and coached in terms of actual performance. The ultimate measure of success for sales enablement is not completing a programme, but achieving the sales figures, this is an ongoing challenge, especially as your portfolio and therefore your solutions to customer problems evolve. Sales Managers are the driver to achieving this. They should properly manage the forecast by ensuring that the good behaviours you are training people in become everyday habits.
• By including sales management you turn this from a sales engagement process (what are the steps I as a sales rep should take to engage with a client) into a sales enablement process - how can I ensure we successfully sell the product/solution and hit our numbers.

In summary, Accredit's three keys to successful sales teams are

1. Messages - Internal Collateral and External Collateral
2. Environment - Tools (should include order management processes, remember sales people will expect everything to work), Measures and Sales Management
3. Resources - Skills, Knowledge, Coaching for performance

Over the next few weeks we will explore these in more detail, commencing next week with Messages.


If you are about to commence a review of your sales team, or launch a new product now contact either Mark Savinson or Fred Nelson and let Accredit help enable your sales organisation to maximise the opportunities your product set creates.


Remember, we can give you quick feedback just by placing a comment on this blog, or we can work with you to ensure you are best placed to start drive the activities that will help you be successful.

Just because they asked for a proposal does not mean they will read it

In the rush to try and get business have you ever been guilty of thinking that just because you have been asked to send a proposal you assume that the customer will read and understand the proposal before you next meet them? If you have, you are not alone, during the past month we have come across a number of instances where this has happened, including one which happened to us. There is some commonality in the situations we have come across, so we thought we would share them with you and the lessons learned.

A complicated situation rarely translates well to a written proposal
In all of the situations we have seen where the proposal has not been read, or in one case read but not understood, the common situation was that a complex solution to a complex problem was provided. In fact it is fair to stay that in all cases the customer had not been able to articulate the problem clearly, therefore there was no clear, explicit, detailed RFP to respond to.

When we spoke to the sales team and the potential customer we discovered that the customer was using the sales process as the means of understanding the issue and looking for a partner who might be able to help them solve their problem. In all cases they were looking for some form of "emotional favourite" or "trusted advisor" relationship and not an immediate solution.

So why did they ask for a written proposal?
The reality is that a written proposal is usually part of the customer's decision making process, it is a step towards a formal meeting usually with the client and probably others involved in the decision (e.g. procurement, finance or other departments with a vested interest). The reality is that it is more akin to a gatekeeping process that we all have to go through to get to the real issues and potentially the real solution. The written proposal is an integral part of the decision making process as it is often the first document and involvement that the wider decision making team have encountered.

So why didn't they read it?

Remember, that outside of the customer with the issue, the rest of the decision making group do not have a compelling problem that they themselves have to solve. Instead they are a check and balance to ensure the right supplier is chosen and the rules are being followed. The impact of this is that they do not necessarily understand the problem that the proposal is trying to address, let alone the impact of the proposed solution. It is therefore easier for them to decide that the supplier should fully explain the proposal as opposed to reading the written proposal and trying to decode it into language they understand.

As a sales person, you need to understand how influential your customer is, and more importantly how well they appreciate the decision making process of their company. If they understand, and can control the extended decision making group, they can ensure that everyone reads, or at least is aware of what problem they are trying to address and how they would like to achieve this.

What have these experiences taught us?

Here are 6 golden rules we would suggest you follow to ensure that the time you invest adds value to the sales process, and drives success.

1. Does the formal RFP match the informal discussion you have had to identify needs? If not you need to understand what has changed as you may be in danger of answering the wrong, or only part, of the questions on which final decisions will be made.
2. Make sure you understand the role of the written proposal in the decision making process. Is it a "check point" or the formal document that a decision is to be based upon?
3. Send a draft version of your proposal to your contact for confirmation that it addresses the issues.
4. Validate what your customer wants the formal presentation to address. Always ask if this has been agreed by the other members of the decision making group
5. Be prepared to run through the proposal in detail at the presentation, even if you were told that they would read it in advance. Just ask them the question!
6. Just because good sales practice tells you that you should get the customer to do the majority of the talking at a meeting, this does not always hold true. You need to confirm with your contact whether they want a "show and tell" or a discussion around the proposal.

So what were the outcomes?

In all the cases, including ours, the sales team had to go back to their customer to discuss the meeting. In the majority of cases they discovered that there was still confusion as none of the vendors had delivered the "one-stop-shop" solution the wider decision making group was hoping to see. In fact, there was recognition that the RFP and the associated brief for the presentation did not clearly articulate what they were hoping to hear.

To drive the process forward the sales teams went back to basics of "what are you trying to achieve?" By working closely with the customer they were able to to help them better articulate the problem to the wider decision making unit, and then appoint their preferred partner.

So what is our message to you?

The role of a sales team is to help your customer sponsor to have the confidence to make the right decision. Your sponsor may not know how to "work the system" - you need to help him/her. Your relationship, knowledge of the customer's processes and your overall selling skills are key to them getting to the "right" decision. Remember, the formal proposal is only a component of the whole decision making process. Knitting together all of the components is integral to your success.

Be prepared to ask for help

If you are not happy with your approach to dealing with formal proposals, or the final stages of the cycle please feel free to contact Accredit. We can give you quick feedback just by placing a comment on this blog, or we can work with you to ensure you are best placed to start drive the activities that will help you be successful.

Do you want to know more?

Either read our "Helping business drive sales" document or contact mark.savinson@sales-accredit.com and Mark can take you through more detail. 

Harness the attitude - Just because you know how - doesn't mean you will

Following on from last week's thoughts on doing not telling, this week we wanted to remind you that there is a barrier that needs to be overcome if you are going to get people to do something that they have not done before - how to overcome the fear of failure and uncertainty.

Self Confidence is an Attitude

Fear of failure is usually a symptom of a lack of confidence, although many sales managers like to think of it as "not having the right attitude". When working with sales managers on coaching programmes, one of the key areas we focus on is helping them deal with confidence issues within their teams and the individual team members.

If we lived in a text book environment, self confidence would purely be an "internalised" issue, i.e. how can we help the sales person to have the self-belief that results in confidence in the ability to do what is required of them to make the sale and achieve the number.

At a purely personal level, building self confidence is simply a process. There are some basic things you can do to boost self confidence.

• Systematic Desensitisation - Or in english, overcome your fears gradually, or as many sales managers will tell you, "don't try and boil the ocean" or "eat an elephant whole".
• Expect success - Everything is self-fullfilling - if you believe you will fail, you will.
• Imagine success - visualisation is one of the most powerful tools to ensure success, just watch athletes before they run.
• Manage your risks - Have you ever noticed how most American management books start with a list of "failures" and how the author learnt from them. The most successful people are those who take risks - "nothing ventured nothing gained"
• You do not have to be perfect - No one expects you to be good at everything, just good enough at the things you should be good at to do your job well
• Know your limitations, identify your fears then try and overcome them, the only way to overcome them is to address them head on
• If you don't believe in yourself, why should anyone else - Re-affirm what you are good at, say it out loud, and then over time add to your capability list

All of these sound perfectly sensible, so you have to ask why are there still so many people who lack confidence? Unfortunately the answer does not just lie with the individual, too often it's their working environment that creates the fear.

What does a confident work environment look like?

Your working environment must support and encourage your people if you want your people to overcome their fear and have a confident, success-led attitude.

1. An action oriented environment - Does your work environment support action oriented people? Do you let them focus on doing the important things that will generate success and not force them to deal with the urgent action requirements of their managers? Do you know what success looks like, or do you only measure activity?
2. Do you let people face their fear? - Do you have a supportive, coaching culture that allows people to identify their fears and then support them to address them? Or do you have a competitive environment with a JDI attitude, "failures never prosper"
3. Do you allow people to fail and then learn from the mistake? - Does your culture allow people to fail and then learn? Without the opportunity to fail no-one will ever attempt anything new.
4. Is there time to prepare? - We all know the old adage, "Fail to prepare, prepare to fail", but do you encourage preparation. How many managers prepare before a 1-2-1, are they setting the right example?
5. The right attitude comes in steps - There is no magic bullet, instead a successful attitude is the result of taking a number of steps. The reality is that many of us only know we have arrived at the right place attitudinally once we have got there and we look back. Courage comes after the event, you have to attempt something before you can overcome the fear. You can only truly achieve success in a supportive environment that recognises JDI does not mean success. It is a cultural thing that grows organically. It is not a methodology, more a recognised, habitual way of doing things.
6. Can you try new things? - Confident people like to try new things and to keep learning, in doing so they progress. This is not just about having a personal development plan, this is more about supporting continuous development. The individual is in charge of their future, they are not spoon fed. The system, the culture supports those that are willing to try something new

A positive attitude is dependent on a positive environment

Both Fred and I regularly come across sales teams who are not achieving their potential, unfortunately the reason for their failure to achieve does not lie with their manager, but lies with the environment. There is an expression "the fish rots from the head" which best explains what is happening. Senior management are not encouraging the right environment and they pass the pressures down the organisation. In these cases the only sales people who have the "right attitude" are the mavericks who operate outside the organisation. The majority of sales people will keep their heads down and not "rock the boat".

So what is our message to you?

Success comes from people who have the right attitude, you can only achieve this by creating the right environment that supports people overcoming their inherent fear of change, driven by good coaching that helps people think positive and try new things. Remember if you are thinking of recruiting someone new, you can hire based on attitude as you can train the skills.

Be prepared to ask for help

If you are not happy with your approach to coaching or how you create a positive environment feel free to contact Accredit. We can give you quick feedback just by placing a comment on this blog, or we can work with you to ensure you are best placed to start drive the activities that will help you be successful.

Do you want to know more?

Either read our "Helping business drive sales" document or contact mark.savinson@sales-accredit.com and Mark can take you through more detail. 

It's all about doing, not telling

In the past week both Fred and I have had similar experiences, but with different clients, we have come across the gap between management telling the sales teams what they would like them to do, and sales actually doing it.

Now before you invest time in reading our experiences, let me explain what we are trying to say. It's not the methodology that generates results, it's activities (hopefully using the methodology) that deliver success.

So what has caused us to remind everyone of this?

Coaching is not about methodology, it is about creating a successful sales team
Accredit have been working with sales management in a number of large IT companies, the objective is to get sales managers to effectively coach their people to spend more time understanding their customers' needs as opposed to fulfilling orders.

The challenge Accredit has identified, and is addressing, is the gap between senior management focusing on "coaching methodologies" (e.g. GROW, CLEAR, OSKAR, etc.) and sales managers applying coaching techniques when they work with their teams. It has quickly become apparent that whilst most of the sales managers could describe the methodology, few of them have translated this into effective coaching behaviours.

Let me give you an example, one of the sales managers, who has been identified as a high flyer, intellectually understood how to coach, but their behaviours with their team did not reflect the methodology. They spent too much time telling, not enough time listening and getting their people to identify their own solutions to issues. Because they were so bright they went straight to telling their sales reps what they were doing wrong and what they should be doing instead. Their team were intimidated by their manager and created a behaviour of telling the manager what they wanted to hear, which was not necessarily the truth.

To address this, we asked the manager to do two things:

1. Watch the sales reps in a customer meeting (without interfering), score the meeting using Accredit's assessment tool and then discuss how the meeting went. The objective is to get the sales manager to understand how the sales rep behaves in a meeting, as opposed to how they say they behave.
2. Run a 1-2-1 coaching session using the results of the assessment. The sales rep is asked to explain why they took the approach they did and to identify what they would do differently. The sales manager's role in this session is to facilitate the sales rep to help them identify what they did well and what they could improve on, they must then define their own objective, focusing on making it measurable and having a timeframe for when it must be done. The sales rep has to own the problem, and then own the solution.
   
   During this coaching session, Accredit's assessor, along with the sales manager's manager assesses the 1-2-1 and scores it on Accredit's tool. At the end of the session, the Accredit assessors and the manager coach the sales manager.

What has been the impact? The best way to explain is to let two sales managers tell you:

"It seems obvious, but it can be easy to speed up the process by telling the team what to do, I now recognise this is not necessarily the way to get the best results. Going through the coaching process allows the individual to buy into the activity and and deliver against action plans."

"I will ensure that I allow the team to make their own suggestions by asking one question and then waiting from answers I will also ensure that I encourage active listening" 

In both of these cases the managers understood the methodology, but had not translated this into their behaviours.

Good methodology without activity achieves zero success.
The second example is a piece of work we are doing for a marketing team within a hardware vendor. We have worked with them to create some specific sales messages which can be used by their own sales people as well as their channel. The objective of these messages is to identify opportunities for a specific product set, qualify the opportunities in/out quickly and focus sales resources where they will have the greatest success.

At the start of the project identified that key to success was getting the sales teams to buy into focussing their most limited resource, time, on the campaigns. To do this we had to ensure that all the messages were in-line with the rest of their sales activities, simple to execute and most importantly helped the teams to achieve their sales objectives.

Now we have a very effective approach to creating sales friendly messages which, when aligned to effective sales behaviours, help our clients grow their pipelines and generate revenue. However success is dependent on activity from the sales team, the messages do not generate the revenue, it is the sales team who achieve it. To achieve this success what do we have to ensure.

1. There is an expression, "the fish rots from the head" which is a useful analogy when it comes to successful sales campaigns. If management does not actively drive sales execution, then the campaign will fail. It does not matter how good the message, or methodology, if it is not followed through it will fail.
   
   Success is therefore reliant on senior sales managers owning a number associated with the campaign and passing this number down to the sales team. They have to have skin in the game, if not management will focus sales resources on other areas and your campaign will fail, regardless of how good the campaign is.
   
   
2. The campaign must be simple to execute, from a sales perspective. A key sales behaviour is the desire to take the path of least resistance, i.e. the easiest way of achieving the number. Sales people are not academics; they are practical people who just want to know what they have to do. Any campaign must therefore focus on simple steps which will achieve results, be clear what you want people to do, how it will help them earn £££ and measure the outcomes. Remember the acronym KISS (Keep it simple, stupid)
   
   
3. Align everything to the strategic plan. A campaign will fail if it does not support the overall focus. When everyone is focussed on selling notebooks, a campaign to sell servers will fail, regardless of how good the message is.
   
   
4. Measure progress, specifically activity (number of calls, number of meetings, number of quotes) and the pipeline. These will tell you what is actually happening. If the activity is not there you will have to go back to the managers to drive the activity, if they will not then they have not bought into the campaign!

Do we always achieve success? Well as we are so proud of our approach, I would like to say yes, but unfortunately the answer is occasionally no. Whilst marketing will always praise our work, we have been involved in projects that when we review them were never going to succeed, why, because the activity was never going to be undertaken to deliver the results. Focus was on the telling a good story, not delivering the story to as many people as possible. 

So what is our message to you?

If you want to achieve anything, it will only succeed if people actually do it. Yes, you need to tell them what to do, but that is only the start. The real work is ensuring they do it and this is where you need to put the majority of your focus. Stop thinking about the how and start to focus on the doing.

Be prepared to ask for help

If you are not happy with your approach to coaching or how you create your sales messages feel free to contact Accredit. We can give you quick feedback just by placing a comment on this blog, or we can work with you to ensure you are best placed to start drive the activities that will help you be successful.

Do you want to know more?

Either read our "Helping business drive sales" document or contact mark.savinson@sales-accredit.com and Mark can take you through more detail. 

UK Election - lessons sales people can learn

As we get towards the end of the election campaign, we thought it might be interesting to see if we could draw any comparisons with how the UK parties have run their campaigns and the basics of selling.

Getting the message right
As with any sales message, there are 2 things that will drive success, content and delivery. As sales people our aim is to have a message that links to the needs of the customer, and is delivered in a manner that ensures the customer has confidence in our ability to deliver. For many of us, a key issue is to get the balance right between selling ourselves (personal credibility) and selling our organisations.

So what has this got to do with the election campaign?

Messaging

• All of the main political parties started off in broadcast mode, telling us what they were going  to do for us. As the campaign has progressed they have moved from telling to re-acting to the issues raised by the electorate.
• The niche parties have been able to have more targeted messages which meet the needs of their target audiences.

Delivery

• The debates highlighted the value of effective delivery, often to the exclusion of relevant content. I was personally fascinated how many times the party leaders said "I", a clear sign that they had been coached to create some emotional link with the audience and the viewer (just remember how Nick Clegg repeatedly used the name of the questioner and said "I will answer your question")
• Clearly the debates put all the focus on the individual leaders and their ability to communicate, however as the campaign has progressed, focus is moving away from the individual and parties are attacking parties and their ability to deliver.

So how do these link to sales.

1. From a messaging perspective, the more targeted you are in terms of your audience, the easier it is to connect. Niche specialist suppliers always find it easier to connect, at a message level, than the larger generalist. However the generalist can build credibility by focussing on the wider picture.
2. From a delivery perspective, the emotional link is key, if your customer can connect with you they are more likely to listen to you. But there needs to be depth to the message, or your competition can use your lack of depth as a major competitive selling point.

Getting the organisation right

It is easy for any of us to work out who has the tightest organisational control during this election, and just like any sales organisation, political parties must create an environment that makes it easy to gain votes.

In the last few days inconsistent messages have been delivered by some of the parties, and instead of focussing the electorate on all the positive messages they have, commentators have focussed on the inconsistencies, e.g. to tactical vote or not.

Just think how your customers would feel if they received mixed messages from your organisation, e.g. outsource versus insource, or full service versus "value brand". The organisation plays a large role in ensuring that we as sales people are able to do our job, and if the organisation is not truly sales focussed it can easily become the barrier to success.

Let's not forget the people
It has been interesting to see how the parties have brought out their experts to focus on key areas, or to deliver specific messages. All the parties recognise the need to use a range of people with specific skills to drive their message home.

One of the interesting aspects of the post TV debate period is how focus has moved to the depth of capability within the competing parties. Some of the parties have been focussing on "look beyond the style of the leader and focus on the substance", and this is being countered by the parties bringing out more people, where possible.

So how does this relate to sales, a successful sales campaign requires a team, led by the sales person, but with experts being brought in as required. The experts bring credibility and the perception of depth of capability. Furthermore a good team matches individuals to decision makers within the customer. This peering ensures that specific messages can be delivered to targeted audiences by specialists

So what are the lessons we can learn?

1. Selling is not about telling, it is about listening and addressing the identified issues
2. Effective delivery of the message requires an emotional link with the customer
3. Ensure you have a clear and consistent message, and that everyone uses it.
4. To be credible as an organisation, sales people must learn how to use their colleagues throughout the sales process.

Whatever the outcome of the election tomorrow, valuable sales lessons can be learnt. Think how much money the parties spend on crafting messages and coaching the leaders. Learn from what they do, identify what works and then use similar techniques.