Attitude can make or break you

Last week I was working with a sales team that has a stretching new business target for 2010/2011 and is just setting out on the new fiscal with vigour and high levels of motivation. Well that is what I expected. What I saw and heard was, surprisingly, different to my expectation.

I listened while a sales specialist complained to his sales manager that he was faced with a portfolio "not fit for purpose" and that it would therefore be nigh on impossible for him to do his number. So here we are in the first month of the year and this guy is already making excuses!

At Accredit we believe strongly in being positive about everything we attempt to achieve with our clients and hence our business. We are all personally responsible for our own thoughts and beliefs and of course the actions that flow from those thoughts and beliefs. We have spent the last couple of years working hard to keep growing our capability and our client base through a difficult period for us all.

So why do some people struggle so much with getting their attitude "right"? Maybe some of us just find it too easy to put hard work into the "too hard" tray on our mental desktops. I'm no psychologist so I don't profess to understand all of the issues underneath a negative approach to the challenges ahead.

Over the past couple of weeks Mark and I have given you our views on how to approach the planning period of a new sales year. We hope you found these last two posts on planning useful and helpful. Planning and a positive attitude go hand in hand. Believing you can achieve a great deal over the coming year is about having a great attitude and having a great sales plan.

As for my friend I met last week who had such a negative attitude towards his new sales year I would say one or two things:-

1. Selling is essentially simple - addressing your customers needs, issues and problems with products, solutions and answers that help your customers grow their business through improved productivity, lower costs, increased revenues or whatever added value you can help them with.
2. Having a portfolio fit for purpose is about working with your customers and your internal partners in product lines, finance, order handling, marketing etc to create something that people want to buy. It is not about moaning that it is "not fit for purpose" and therefore finding excuses before you have even got off your backside at the start of the financial year.
3. If you think you can or if you think you can't either way you are likely to be right.
4. Selling is surprise, surprise a team effort. You may want to be "top salesperson" and that is a great thing to strive for but you cannot do it without your customers, your sales manager and your other internal partners such as product managers. If you need help from them - tell them. Tell them what your customers want and work with your internal partners to do that, profitably for your business (remember them - the ones that pay your salary and bonus)
5. Don't be a fault finder. You can't change anything until you change yourself. So get that Positive Mental Attitude moving and you will be absolutely amazed at what you can achieve

If you want to know more about our ADMIRE model for improving your sales habits then why not drop us a line at fred.nelson@sales-accredit.com or call me Fred Nelson on 07850 779084

Good selling!

By the way I wrote this blog whilst watching the end of the London Marathon on TV. Some of the stories of the "everyday people" running for charity and overcoming personal tragedy are absolutely heart wrenching. What a fantastic attitude some people have!

I hope my sales friend from this week was watching.

Understanding what you need to do to improve your selling capability

Over the past months you will have read how here at Accredit we believe that selling is fairly simple when it is properly executed. Having understood your customer's needs, problems and issues it is about providing a solution that adds value - in other words what your customer gains from buying from you provides them with benefit way beyond the cost of the solution or product.

At the moment we are talking to a couple of large corporates about potentially running their Sales Academies for them. There is an interesting contrast between the two. One is pretty clear about what they want to achieve and how they want it done (although their procurement process leaves a little to be desired). The other is less clear about what they want mainly because they are going through a huge portfolio change that involves, in their minds, a complete set of training courses, delivered as cheaply as possible via online modules and tests.

So what has this got to do with understanding what you need to do to improve your selling capability? Well, everything actually. Unless you as a business are clear about what problems you are trying to solve, about how you need your sales force to act and behave then how can you possibly know what your customers might want? The two - your customers and your sales capability - have to be thought about as an entity. They are your market and your contact with your market.

There is of course a third element - your offering, your portfolio and whether your customers want to buy your products (and whether your sales people are capable of selling them).

So these three elements are intrinsically linked when thinking about "improving" your sales force. Do you have:-

1. The portfolio capability to address your customer's needs
2. A clear understanding of what problems your customers want solved for them
3. A salesforce that regularly contacts their customer base with a view to understanding their problems and how they might solve them with a value proposition based on your portfolio

Of course there are the additional issues of your marketing and whether it helps your sales people and your customers understand how you add value and there is the key issue of the environment you work in - is it easy for customers to buy from you and is it easy for your sales people to sell within the environment you operate as a business (is your pricing process clear, do you have an order placement and fulfilment process that is painless etc?)

So before you commence on your own road towards a sales academy or any other training for your sales people, ensure you have everything else in place or at least planned to coincide with a freshly developed set of sales people

Developing your sales people has to go hand in hand with developing other aspects of your business. So if you are thinking of building a sales academy or even some less grand such as a small suite of training and development programs ensure that everything else is joined up too.

That way, when your sales people are well educated and raring to go you will have everything else in place to be successful whether that be your market messaging, your portfolio, your order handling processes, your pricing, your fulfilment etc.

Improving your selling capability is not just about sales training. It is about a collection of resources which, when optimised, will deliver increased sales and margin

Planning - I don't need to do it!!!!

Last week we talked about the importance of account planning now that the new fiscal has commenced. Key issues we mentioned were understanding your client's priorities for this year, how much money do they have to spend, how are they likely to spend it, what is the Decision Making process, who makes the decisions etc.

In Stephen Covey terms we were about things that are Important but not Urgent. Planning is exactly that. It is about structuring what activities you are going to undertake, about what relationships you are going to have to build to get to the Decision Makers and it is about looking for new opportunities within your account base.

Most of your revenue will come from a few of your key accounts - good old 80:20 always works. But how are you going to change that? How are you going to grow your revenue and your personal earning capability unless you plan to extend your activity into those accounts that you have rarely or never touched, unless you have a plan? Where are you going to find time to plan when you are so busy with your existing clients?

The answer of course is by spending less time on unimportant activities (be they urgent or non urgent in Covey parlance). But how are you going to identify how you grow your revenue even if you can find the time? The answer of course is to have some structure and discipline towards what you have to achieve this year, build a plan. Without structure and discipline you will just keep meandering and doing "stuff" and maybe if you are lucky you may achieve your number for 2010/11.

Let me illustrate my point with an anecdote. Just 2 weeks ago I was working with a client on a coaching for Sales Managers program. One of the activities we undertake is to observe the Sales Manager having a 1:1 session with their team members. So having explained to the individual sales person my role (and basically to ignore me) the Sales Manager kicked off the 1:1.

All was going quite well for a few minutes until it came to the part where the Sales Manager was talking to his team member about this year's plan. Both of them talked about great stuff like setting SMART objectives, improving product knowledge in areas where it was lacking and what goals should be set when suddenly the sales person launched into a tirade of concerns about being micro managed and why couldn't he just be left alone until the end of the year so he could get on with his job without people on his back all the time - "doesn't anyone trust me?" was the gist of his outburst.

What was really happening of course was that the sales person was so busy doing unimportant stuff (both urgent and non urgent) that he dreaded the thought of having a plan and having someone "check up on him" on a regular basis. This guy was prepared to go into the year, with the biggest new business target he had ever taken on (everyone in the team needed to find new business of £1.2m in 2010/11) yet he thought he could do it carrying on doing the same stuff he had always done without any structure, plan or review between now and March 2011!

When questioned by the Sales Manager it turned out this guy had only met with 25% of his customer base. He knew virtually nothing about three quarters of his customers and was complaining about micro management and the number of sales calls he was expected to make (in this case just 8 per week were asked for yet he saw this as arbitrary and excessive)

So what is all this to do with Planning? The answer is everything. You have to Plan the Work and then Work the Plan. Think about which accounts you could grow.

• What do you know about these untapped accounts?
• Which products could you sell into these accounts?
• What are the business development opportunities in your client base?
• Which accounts can you grow, which ones will you have to start from scratch?
• What is your contact strategy?
• How many new clients will you have to contact to generate sufficient leads to create a pipeline that will provide you enough revenue to hit your number?
• What is your conversion ratio of Opportunities to Closed deals.
• What is your weekly call plan going to have to look like?
• How many prospects do you need to qualifying in/out each week? What number of closed deals do you need by 30th June to know you are on track?

You get the idea don't you? Build a simple spreadsheet with all of your accounts key information. If you have one - extract the data from your company's CRM system and build the contact plan, calling plan, in fact all aspects of the plan from that. Then work that plan and check progress each week - first in your own mind then share this with your sales manager.

Every week look at what worked, what did not, what you need to do differently if you are falling short, what you can do more of when you are successful.

Don't forget to include all the things you do not know about your target accounts in your plan

• What might other members of the Account team or service team know about the target clients
• Do some landscaping - find out what your targets spend with your competitors
• Find out how they buy, who makes the decisions, call the procurement department - create a "buying decisions" chart for each new client - the who, the how and the key decision making criteria of each prospect

All of this is about good planning and none of it is about micro management or lack of trust

Unless you have a plan you are going to have to be very lucky to achieve your target; especially if that target is bigger than ever before and therefore involves you in going beyond your comfort zone.

Planning in sales is as important as it is in any other discipline - it provides structure and focus and enables you check progress. It is the bedrock of a good sales year. Fail to plan and Plan to Fail as the old cliche goes.

Isn't it annoying how these old cliches are also truisms?

Be prepared to ask for help

If you are not happy with your account plans 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 the financial year in an effective manner.

Do you want to know more?

Either read our "Helping business drive sales" document, download the "Personal Business Plan" or contact fred.nelson@sales-accredit.com and Fred can take you through more detail.

It's the buyer who decides when to buy, not the salesman

We regularly have the opportunity to review our clients account plans and regardless of the sales methodology being used we are constantly amazed at the poor quality of the information. This post is not about how to prepare a full account plan, but there is one aspect we want to focus on as we start a new financial year and that is client buying patterns.

Your clients are starting a new financial year just like you
Let's keep this simple, now is the time of the year when your clients identify the following:

• Their key priorities
• How much money they have to spend
• How they have prioritised that spending
• What their sign off limits are
• How budgets are released, quarterly, half-yearly or "zero budgeting"

Your sales teams need to find this out and write it down in their account plans. This will help them prioritise their activities; to put it bluntly they should be focussing where the budget is, this may not be with the people they usually deal with.

Do you know your client's buying patterns?

Do your sales people know how and when budgets are released and also when they may be put on hold. We have a client who does not finalise their budgets until the 2nd month of a new financial year, and more than this they have historically stopped signing up for new projects mid-way through the third quarter. This means we have to have closed the year's number in six months!

Let's not pretend the above is unique, it happens everywhere, just look back at the buying patterns of your customers, I am sure you will find similar patterns.

But how do I find out this information?
If your account plans do not have this information, you must go out and discover this. The obvious way to do this is to ask your contacts within the account. This is an important action, and sales managers should not let the "urgent" tactical activities get in the way of this important strategic activity at the start of the year.

If your existing contacts do not know, then you have already identified you have too narrow a contact strategy and you need to engage either at a higher level, where the budgets sit, or engage with Finance and Procurement to get a better picture.

It's not just about the budgets

Remember, there are rules for how the money is spent, make sure you understand them as this will help you understand how quickly an order can be placed.

• Is there a discretionary spend limit - can you operate under the radar and still get an order?
• Is there a "sign-of" process, does this involve some form of committee, if so who is on it and how often does it meet?
• Can you use an operational expenditure based solution to overcome limits in capital expenditure? Will the decision remain with the operational manager?

Account Plans are not just for the "big boys"

I am sure you have spent time defining your sales targets, regardless of how large your business is. The account plan will tell you how you are going to get the money out of your target accounts. Without a plan you are either relying on the fact that your sales people will do the right thing, or maybe you are hoping to be lucky.

It does not matter how large your company is - you can create simple account plans, that align with your desired revenue targets against the customer's needs and approach to spending. You may discover very quickly that you have over estimated or under estimated the potential in that account.

Be prepared to ask for help

If you are not happy with your account plans 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 the financial year in an effective manner.

Do you want to know more?

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