Selling Power Blog

The New Discovery

Today's blog post is by Skip Miller, President of M3 Learning.

 

 

With travel still in limbo, sales meetings still being done virtually, and demo-to-close ratios dropping to all-time lows, it’s not surprising that sales teams are finally looking at what happens in the discovery step of a sale. 

Some companies are changing their discovery process and getting some remarkable results. Here’s what they’re doing.

Start with bite-sized meetings 

The old way, you had to travel to the prospect in person, you had an hour, and you were under pressure to make the most of it. The goal of discovery used to be: 

• Why buy anything? 
• Why us? 
• Why now? 

It all centered on finding out if they had a need for your stuff, and if you had a solution to fit. 

That’s why when you were done, your goal was to understand what your solution was, how much it was going to cost, and when you were going to close.

It wasn’t close to perfect, but it’s what happened, since you didn’t really want to make another trip. 

With virtual meetings, the rules have changed. You have 30 minutes, max (Why do you think TED talks are 18 minutes?). You need to break up discovery into bite-sized chunks, and it’s usually now multiple meetings instead of one.  

Of course, since they are virtual, that’s not a problem, and if the customer agrees to these, you get a sense of how qualified they are too.

Not only does this take less overall time, but you have a fully engaged client, who feels heard, and you are working on potential options that could fit their budgets. 

Prepare with customer chair questions

Instead of presenting or giving a demo in the discovery meeting, you now need to think like the customer. What are they thinking about that you don’t know?

• What is causing them to make a change? Not what’s causing them to look at you.
• What is the size of the problem? 
• What are the outcomes they are looking for? 
• What happens if they don’t make a change? 
• When did they want to start the change that you can be a part of? 

Most of the first discovery step should be about them and what they are trying to do. At the end, they should feel heard, and you should feel good about setting up the next step. It’s not about you yet. You do not want to be a solution hunting for a problem. 

Understand dual value propositions 

There are always two value propositions. The executive one, which we call above the line (ATL), and the person/team that will be using what you are selling, which we call the below the line (BTL) buyer.  

That would be typically a mix of ATL and BTL buyers, and that’s a recipe for disaster. 

Next steps

With this new discovery process in mind, it allows your next steps (demo, trial, POC) to be validation, rather than education. The prospect can take ownership of the solutions being discussed, rather than just understand what you are saying, but have no clue what’s in it for them. 

This will shorten your sales process, ensure you have a qualified prospect, and get to a decision quicker.

Summary 

By staying with the old way of discovery and not adapting to virtual selling and buying, you will be trying to fit that square peg into that round hole. Adapt to what the buyer is doing, not your old successful habits, and you’ll see a remarkable uptick in your sales. 

“Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature's inexorable imperative.” – H. G. Wells 

Skip Miller is the author of seven sales and sales management books including Selling Above and Below the Line. You can reach him at [email protected], or go to his website at M3Learning.com. 

2022 Outlook: An Old School Selling Model Becomes Cutting Edge

Today's blog post is by Mark Boundy, CEO of Boundy Consulting. 

 

 

In 2022, some organizations will realize they’re automating the wrong thing: a sales model that isn’t how their customers would like to engage. 

Research (CSO Insights, 2018 and Sales Mastery, 2021) shows that while some customers are fine with an optimized sales process with dedicated cold-caller/appointment setters, demo specialists, and closers, they also found that some customers want much more. Some welcome expert “trusted advisor” sellers. 

The near-universal buying process has variations 

Let’s reacquaint ourselves with customer behavior. The customer journey is the same it’s always been, but has two main variations, one of which is being called “the new way customers buy”. To understand each option, take a moment to study the persistent buying process: 

When a customer knows all about what they’re buying 

When a customer is repeating a familiar purchase, the first step above seems like it’s shortened or even eliminated entirely. We’ve heard the research: Many buyers self-inform before engaging with vendor salespeople, who simply need to respond efficiently to an already-underway buying process.  

This isn’t actually an abandonment of the persistent process; the customer is simply repurposing some of last time’s decision, and to outsiders, it just looks like the truncated diagram above.    

Here’s the twist: When salespeople don’t add value, customers commonly self-inform elsewhere. When buyers perceive sufficient information availability (and scarcity of good sellers) they conduct the beginning of their process in stealth mode: it still happens, just without your salespeople allowed access. 

Many in the “sales industrial complex” tell us that this shortened buying decision model is the new normal. They sell us tools to automate “quickly getting in line with self-directed buyers to win our share of business”. We’ve all been pitched with a highly automated sales model for customers who are well informed and highly confident in their ability to make a decision.

The “divide and optimize” model divides selling into discrete steps, positions specialist jobs in each portion of the selling process, and optimizes automation and performance within each step. Here’s the thing: This “divide and optimize” model works great for well informed customers. That isn’t all customers, though, is it? What if it’s not yours? 

For many buyers, what’s old is new again

The CSO Insights and Sales Mastery research shows that many customers consult much earlier in the buying process if the decision is: 

• New to me or my company 
• Risky to me or my company 

Under these conditions, the customer slows down, and their process looks like the full-length persistent process—that is, fully front-weighted.  

They are willing to consult with anyone who rises to the level of trusted expert. They don’t care whether that’s your salespeople or someone else—they just want value added to their decision process. Whoever comes in and establishes their worth wins a “trusted expert” seat at the customer’s conference table. If they elevate your seller into that seat, the sales model will look much different than the divide and optimize model:  

Customers willing to engage a trusted advisor won’t settle for script-reading cold-callers. In fact, most outreach specialists generally provide ample proof that your company isn’t the one who deserves a trusted advisor seat at the table. Maybe a competitor has salespeople who pass the test. 

Choose wisely in 2022 

Before you go into 2022 with a poor-fitting sales model, figure out where your offer’s buying decision lies on a customer’s “willingness to engage” scale. If your customers need a “trusted advisor” selling model, you may need to invest in your people, not your tech stack.  

When you do, you’ll find that it improves your sales, your pricing integrity—and profits— informs better marketing, and sharpens your product strategy. I’m happy to help you figure out how to do it in your world, using your language. 

To your success!

Get access to a tool that will help you navigate the “willingness to engage” scale. It only takes a few minutes to complete. Email me for a copy. If you don’t want to reach out, you can get started by reading my book, Radical Value: How to Take Your Company to the Next Level Through Radical Customer Centricity.

Redefining B2B Selling in the Post-COVID World

Today's post is by Michelle Vazzana, co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer, VantagePoint Performance.

 

According to Accenture, the new world of B2B selling requires several imperatives to survive and thrive. The first of these imperatives is to “rediscover your customer.” In this blog, we’ll explore the prevailing theme that historical customer insights are irrelevant, and how to gain real insights into what your customers want now. 

Historical customer insights are irrelevant 

This idea of disregarding historical customer insights is a scary one. Sales and marketing leaders and salespeople have been doing this for their entire careers. Now we’re told “throw it out.” Well, you might ask, “What do we do in lieu of historical insights? How do we get our arms wrapped around the ‘now’?” 

As Accenture suggests, the leaders of tomorrow are modifying their organizations’ sales priorities and are using predictive analytics and AI engines to derive key customer insights. But how? Which AI engines and what data are being used? We all want insights and are becoming increasingly reliant on data, but are there rich sources of data that we’re missing? Are the best, most useful insights closer than we think? 

There is gold to be mined 

We offer a resounding “yes” to that question. Yes, there are rich sources of data that lead to incredibly precise insights: They are the very people that make up your sales force. Your salespeople. They are the ones interacting with your customers. They are the ones experiencing the changes that take place over time. There is gold to be mined in the heads of your salespeople; you just have to find a way to get at the information so that you can analyze it and use it to make better decisions. 

Situational awareness is the key 

Accenture suggests that we need to equip our sellers with situational awareness, enabling them to better respond to changing customer conditions. Organizations can only do this with a mechanism that extracts vital customer behavior details out of the minds of their sellers and uses that information to develop recent, relevant insights to changing customer behavior. 

The best, most accurate way to accomplish this is by examining deal-level data—real details related to real deals your sellers are pursuing. So, do we just extract the information from our CRM? Well, to say that CRM data has questionable hygiene is an understatement. This is a problem that organizations have been struggling with since the introduction of CRM. Sellers are notorious for putting the minimum amount of deal level information into their CRM when they log their opportunities. It may be getting better over time, but it is still falling far short of adequate. With highly questionable CRM hygiene, where do organizations go to mine the data? To their sellers. 

The best path to customer insights 

To uncover meaningful customer insights, you must develop a reliable way to gather very detailed deal-level customer information. You need a way to pull information out of your seller’s heads that favors fact over opinion, allowing you access to details that can be used to produce insights. This would give you a reliable way to determine the best sales approach to lead to a win in each buying situation. And it is quicker, easier, and less expensive than you think. 

Buying factors and buyer preferences 

Our research has revealed that there are over 25 buying factors that influence buyer behavior. That’s a lot to consider. What organizations need is a way to narrow the field and identify what matters most. That is where AI and machine learning come into play. By gathering seller-provided forensic information of won and lost deals, machine learning can be used to spot patterns in buying factors and how those factors influence unique buying situations. Sellers have very detailed information in their heads about deals they’ve pursued. Getting that information out of their heads and into a database is the first start. 

 

If you are interested in further reading about buying factors and buying situations, read our “How to Build an Agile Sales Force” white paper. Follow VantagePoint Performance on LinkedIn.

8 Steps to Convert Your Sales Team Into a Digital Selling Powerhouse

Today's post is by Jeff Davis, an international keynote speaker and author of the award-winning book Create Togetherness, a strategic roadmap to help B2B revenue leaders accelerate revenue growth by strategically aligning their sales and marketing teams. You can learn more about his work at meetjeffdavis.com or by following him on Linkedin, Instagram, and Twitter.

 

Digital disruption has had a major impact on the sales profession, and it’s important to adopt new ways of working r in order to stay competitive. One area where this is true is customer acquisition and sales productivity. Forrester has shown that 90% of B2B customers start their journey with digital search, meaning sales leaders must focus on making the company and product as visible as possible through multiple channels, all while collecting feedback from customers throughout the process so that they can better serve their needs. It might seem like a daunting task, but a structured approach like Digital-First Selling™ can set you up to transform your sales team into a digital selling powerhouse.   

What is Digital-First Selling™?  

Digital-First Selling™ is a process that leverages digital tools, content, and channels to identify, target, and seamlessly engage buyers throughout their entire buying journey. This approach leads to higher engagement and acceleration of speed-to-revenue. Its primary objective is to help sellers get into the right conversations, with the right people, at the right time.  

Some of the key benefits of this strategy include:  

• Improved lead quality 
• Shorter sales cycle length 
• Growth of inbound leads 
• Increased sales rep productivity  
• Improved ability to connect with key decision-makers in the buying group  

The Digital-First Selling™ Blueprint  

As a sales leader, you must become the change agent for the organization to adopt these new digital selling principles. Here’s how:  

Step 1: Understand the Digital-First buyer mindset  

Increase revenue leaders’ knowledge about how the modern buyer’s preferences have evolved. This can be achieved through activities such as attending workshops, developing a reading list, or working with a consultant.  

Step 2: Develop a 360-degree view of the buyer  

Connect all sources of customer data (i.e. email, CRM, web leads) to develop a holistic picture of the buyer and establish a single source of truth for the organization. This involves strategic alignment across all customer-facing functions.  

Step 3: Establish cross-functional alignment on Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)  

Leverage cross-functional data to determine which customer types provide the most significant ROI for the organization and prioritize targeting other companies like them. Consider metrics like customer lifetime value, customer acquisition cost, and average order value.  

The profile should include standard firmographic identifiers such as annual revenue, geography, and industry as well as business fit metrics such as complimentary software being used, tech adoption maturity, and key business objectives. 

Step 4: Orchestrate a cohesive lead-to-revenue process  

Map the buyer’s journey based on feedback from actual customers. Ensure the map expands across all customer-facing functions (i.e. marketing, sales, customer service). 

Step 5: Develop buying interactions that build confidence 

Identify where gaps exist in content and/or other types of buyer interactions that empower the buyer to progress through the different stages of their journey. Ensure each function clearly understands the different stages of the modern buying cycle and how their role can best add value to the customer during each of them. 

Step 6: Optimize digital selling tools and the revenue tech stack  

Audit both the sales and marketing tech stacks to ensure you have the optimal mix of tech for your business. Also be sure that sales reps have the right digital tools they need to be successful, such as video conferencing, sales enablement, and automated meeting scheduling.  

Step 7: Create a digital sales playbook for reps 

Create a resource that helps sales reps understand how to incorporate all the different selling channels that are available to them to have a cohesive conversation with target buyers. There will most likely also be a need for digital sales training. 

Step 8: Establish a formal feedback loop 

Schedule a consistent cadence of cross-functional revenue team meetings to focus on pipeline health, sharing business intelligence, and adapting to changing market dynamics. 

To be successful in this new reality, sales leaders must help their sales reps increase their digital acumen. Adopting an approach like Digital-First Selling™ can provide your company with an edge over competitors who are still stuck in the old paradigm of solely cold-calling or emailing prospects that have yet to show any interest and low intent to buy.  

Overcoming the Sales Obstacle Course

Today's post is by Nick Smith, President, CEO, and Founder, Saile Inc.

 

These days, “lead” is a muddy word that can mean almost anything or invoke all sorts of emotions. Leads can be good, leads can be bad. Leads can be cultivated, developed, or handed directly to you. Sometimes they are based on inside tips or first-hand information, like a lead story a reporter is chasing. While other times they might be a half-baked product of a colleague’s daydream (brainstorming, right?). 

In my advertising career, a lead could be as simple as a billboard that sparked an idea. At their worst, leads were dead-ends that took a long time to go nowhere.   

But, at their best, a lead — regardless of its backstory — is an opportunity. 

Opportunity, it’s still why we as salespeople wake up every morning to go fight for the products and services we believe in. But as you know, those opportunities don’t always get handed to you with their name and email available, and if they do we probably don’t want to go into the bounce rate. 

What does it take to get a lead?   

Sales leaders today have to jump through many hoops brought to you by marketing automation systems, email look-up finder tools, and third-party subscriptions galore, all before the first cold call or email even happens. 

Think about this: Is using an email lookup tool really that different than thumbing through the Yellow Pages?   

Sales leaders are longing to spend their time where their company needs them most, but too often it’s spent navigating the sales obstacle course. 

Sales Obstacle Course 

What is the sales obstacle course? Trust me, you know it all too well. It’s embedded in the salesperson’s DNA. 

Here is an eye-opening visual into the hurdles the sales leader has to overcome just to get to the actionable opportunity.

Too often, sales leaders spend more hours than they realize navigating all these obstacles just to get in the prospect’s voicemail or inbox. Let the rinse and repeat cycle begin while we forget about all the wasted time spent on redundant prospecting tasks that went nowhere. And let’s not forget how this piecemealed sales stack is draining the marketing budget. 

What’s worse is that this sales obstacle course produces results. It actually works. So at the end of your long process all you remember is the win, not all of the time you spent on dead ends that went nowhere. Instead, consider thinking about the type of opportunities you really want and need. Is there a way to receive these regularly? How can you start at the result and work backward to regularly produce a steady flow of incoming actionable opportunities? 

Sales leaders, you have a funnel to fill and your time is valuable. Prospecting should not be your badge of honor. Closing should be. And you’re the best at it!  

The Solution

The time is now to defeat the sales obstacle course by implementing an all-in-one seamless solution for your sales team. It can mean the difference between spending endless, grueling hours prospecting or focusing that time on what really matters: closing! 

As the sales world becomes more complex, AI is being adopted as a trusted source to streamline the process. Sales leaders, make sure you are looking at the broader picture and avoid setting up more hurdles in your sales obstacle course to ensure your team is sailing towards success!  

Learn how to start using an all-in-one solution to defeat your sales obstacle course and produce Actionable Opportunities with Saile. 

AUTHOR BIO 

Nick Smith is the President, CEO and Founder of Saile Inc., the maker of patent- pending Sailebots. Today, he invites you to embark on the journey that is sales prospecting and learn how it’s being reimagined. Nick is a speaker at the upcoming virtual Sales 3.0 Conference on October 6-7, 2021. 

Why Territory Planning Will Make or Break Your Sales Strategy

Today's post is by Taj Mian, Managing Director, Canada, Board.

 

 

Sales leaders are under enormous pressure to hit targets. In recent years, targets have become more aggressive while markets remain uncertain and competition increases. Now is the time for sales leaders to take a step back and figure out if their teams are set up for success. But how do you best prepare your teams for success? 

The five pillars of sales performance 

The best place to start is to define what you are trying to accomplish. An organization has many types of targets, such as growth, sales, and revenue. Those targets are established by the leadership and then filtered down to the rest of the organization as action items. Once your organization determines its goals, then you can figure out how to make it happen. This means understanding and defining your addressable market, determining your sales strategy, creating a sales forecast, defining sales territories, establishing incentive and compensation plans, and determining the KPIs you will track to monitor performance.  

A big mistake many sales leaders often make when it comes to these five pillars is handling each one in a silo. However, to be successful each pillar must be mapped out in an integrated way that supports the overall strategy and targets defined by leadership.  

One pillar often entirely overlooked by sales leaders is territory management. Your entire sales strategy for the year ahead could hinge on whether you have correctly set up territories. If you don’t meet the challenges of territory planning, your sales team could be confused, inefficient, and not motivated to ensure targets are hit and your sales strategy is successful. 

Reps need achievable sales targets 

As a leader, you must ensure that you create balanced sales territories and quotas. It is demotivating for a sales rep to feel they have a sales territory that does not allow them to reach their quota. If they feel demotivated, the effectiveness of your entire sales organization suffers. You want to ensure your sales organization is aligned and motivated, which means setting up equitable territories, so all your sales reps feel they have an achievable target. Mapping your sales territories properly will ensure they support, not hinder, your sales strategy.  

Your territory mapping may be causing an unnecessary sales turnover issue

Territory mapping is often one of the most overlooked pillars of sales performance. It is usually done quickly, by spreadsheet, without alignment to the overall sales strategy. This hasty process does not result in adequately weighted territories. Most sales organizations share a common pitfall that territories are heavily weighted for a handful of top reps, leaving 70-80% of reps with subpar territories. The reps with subpar territories do not perform well, so they end up leaving for a better opportunity at another organization. This leads to attrition issues; sales rep turnover has a huge impact on your organization because it causes your sales cycles to stop and start too frequently.  

Unbalanced territories also hurt your top performers. Active sales cycles are often given to closers, which overburdens them and limits their ability to handle their territory effectively. Therefore, a fair and equitable distribution of sales territories from the beginning is critical as your sales territories have a direct impact on your ability to accurately predict revenue.  

You need a system that gives you an integrated view of your sales data

Your sales strategy does not stand alone; it is intertwined with forecasting, territory mapping, incentives and compensation, and KPIs. If you, like many sales leaders, are managing data for each of these activities in separate spreadsheets or disparate systems then you are running your sales organization with a huge handicap. Siloed information will never provide an accurate representation of the effectiveness of your sales organization. Each pillar of sales performance is connected to the other, you need an integrated view that shows accurate and integrated data. 

Identifying the source of a problem is often as hard as implementing the actual solution. Sales leaders are constantly overwhelmed with an abundance of data and information – information that is often changing – and many sales leaders may not realize that the true source of their issues are being caused by inefficiencies across their sales team.  

The solution 

The problems you can face with either not having properly set up territories or not having integrated territories with your overall strategy can be the difference between success and failure for your sales team. Therefore, it is crucial for sales leaders to address this and ensure that their sales teams are motivated and working efficiently towards hitting organizational targets. 

Few sales leaders are aware of the possibility to have one comprehensive platform covering all key areas of your sales performance management. As the world of sales becomes ever more competitive, disrupted, and challenging, sales leaders need to make a change to support their strategies and ensure their teams are best placed for success for the years to come. 

Learn more about how Board can support you, and your organization with our integrated end-to-end platform.

The Five Pillars of Sales Performance Management

Today's blog post is by Warren Brinker, Vice-President Sales, Americas, Board International.

 

In many organizations, sales, marketing, and customer success are siloed functions with disparate processes, technologies, and data sources. The result is a lack of clarity and transparency into what’s working - and perhaps more importantly, what isn’t working - for revenue generation. When these functions are separate, it’s difficult to make any meaningful, reliable decisions that help both the CRO and the CFO accomplish their goals. 

Top-performing sales organizations are the ones that recognize the importance of having a single source of truth around revenue operations. When teams are speaking one language and working toward one outcome, both morale and productivity increase. Sales performance management can help accomplish this. At its core are five key pillars that are aligned and synced, enabling sales organizations to achieve consistent, predictable revenue acceleration for the company.  

Defined sales strategy 

First and foremost, it’s critical to have a sales strategy that provides clearly defined objectives and guidance to the sales organization. An effective strategy begins with a description of the addressable market, it includes a commitment to a well-articulated sales plan that leads to a predictable outcome. The best sales plans are the result of reliable internal and external dates, an accurate record of historic sales performance, and clear insights into the existing customer base.  

Reliable sales forecasting 

Sales forecasting is notoriously difficult when organizations have multiple technologies and sources of data that aren’t talking to each other. Organizations should have a forecasting approach that is a true reflection of the market potential and the current and future capabilities of the sales force. To help the sales team achieve their goals, the support team (training and enablement) need to provide the technologies, skills, and knowledge that will help them achieve the level of performance needed to meet or exceed their sales forecast. Top performing companies aim at replicating and reinforcing the behaviors and success habits of their best salespeople.  

Incentives and compensation 

Salespeople are driven by the opportunity to earn more, and sales leaders want to reward salespeople for their ability to create more new customers and build greater relationships with existing customers. However, getting incentives and compensation right is a strategic balancing act to ensure both the CFO’s and CRO’s objectives are being achieved. To retain top performing salespeople, the company’s compensation system requires speed and accuracy so that commissions and bonus payments are delivered 100% and on time. And in order to be able to provide those incentives, sales leaders must ensure they have the right people, processes, and technologies in place to meet forecasting goals and justify costs.  

Territory management  

Territory management is arguably one of the most consequential operational decisions a sales leader can make, because it affects both customers and salespeople. Each sales organization has its own approach to territory management, but it’s often not rooted in any meaningful data and can therefore lead to inequitable territories. When organizations have inequitable territories, salespeople are likely to burn out or lack motivation, and are more likely to miss out on key opportunities. Organizations that use data to identify the ideal customer profile - including industry, company size, revenue, employees, and demographic - are better able to quickly and equitably build territories that serve both customers and salespeople. 

Analytics and KPIs 

Most sales leaders know that key performance indicators are important, however, they often don’t know which ones are actually contributing to sales growth. Sales performance management enables sales teams to figure out which KPIs - such as strategic accounts or pipeline building - are actually responsible for driving sales. In order to identify meaningful KPIs, historical data is a must-have. Organizations should review and analyze data to see where previous successes came from, and then work backwards to identify the workflow, processes, and technologies required to work toward achieving those KPIs on a regular basis.  

Few sales leaders know it’s possible to have one comprehensive platform that covers territory and quota management, compensation, and analytics. To learn more about how to do this for your organization, visit blog.board.com.

Your Dashboard Is Your Blind Spot

Today's blog post is by Mark Boundy. He is the Owner of Boundy Consulting.

 

Every executive and manager worth their salary tracks key metrics—but an amazing minority of those metrics focus organizations on what really matters. 

I’ve held P&L responsibility and lived the dashboard life. I’ve worked on clients’ company dashboards and many, many sales dashboards. Dashboards tend to be inwardly focused, tracking operations, processes, and tasks. Even sales dashboards are about selling activities—calls, demos, proposals, executive meetings, competitor identification, close dates, etc. Worse, dashboards are typically clogged with metrics that are easy to collect, not the ones that matter.

I’ve also grown businesses. Businesses are grown in conjunction with customers by providing value; more customer value than it costs the seller to deliver (so that pricing produces profit). If you’re trying to grow your business, why are so few of your metrics about the value you’re delivering to customers? This blind spot in your dashboards—both sales dashboards and executive ones—is causing you to bleed growth and profits.

For Starters, You Probably Don’t Even Define Value Correctly

Every executive—and every sales person—is sure they know what value is, until you ask them for a definition. Ask ten leaders in your company to write their definition of value, and compare. The results should disturb you.

Little wonder, then, that 22% of directors on boards, and a similar (or lower) percentage of sales people can actually articulate the value their company creates for customers. If you don’t know, you force your customers to figure it out for you—and you’re just plain lucky. Lucky you don’t have better competitors. 

So Let’s All Agree on What Value Is

Value is the desirability of outcomes a customer achieves from doing business with you.

Customer outcomes are not benefits. Where benefits can be a simple customer result (think Harvard professor Theodore Leavitt’s “customers don’t want a quarter inch drill, they want a quarter inch hole”—the hole is a benefit). Outcomes are meaningful results (watching your granddaughter play with the wooden toy you built with your drill). Outcomes are customer-specific, and value only exists in the customer’s mind.

Easy to Collect Figures vs. High-Gain Metrics

Many VPs of sales complain that they measure “quantity not quality”, then return to using the dashboard with quantity-centric metrics they just criticized. The challenge is that we love easy-to-measure things like phone calls made, over “quality conversations conducted”. Even the AI tools that monitor and analyze conversations are crude: “how many times was a specific word spoken?” or “percentage of total seconds filled by seller speech vs. customer’s words”.  Don’t settle for easy-to-measure.”Far better an approximate answer to the right question, than the precise answer to the wrong question,” said the famous statistician, John Tukey.

Quality conversations become easier to measure when you gauge "value articulated". Imagine insisting that your sellers do what top producers have always done: progress with the conversation until the customer can articulate the dollar (or euro/yuan/pound) value of an outcome they think your product/service can help them achieve. That metric is just as precise as the number of conversations, but represents quality. It also measures how well sellers complete the entire value-selling process (even if they got a customer to validate a desirable outcome, but not measure it monetarily—they didn't complete the task, and the metric shows as zero).

Internal Numbers vs. Externally-Focused Guidance

Internal, functionally-directed metrics have their place. That said, they tend to focus on efficiency, not effectiveness. It’s harder to track externally-focused metrics like what value (sometimes called “why buys” and “why nows”) is most compelling to different customer types.  Doing so measures the kind of effectiveness that grows businesses.  

Price is where the customer’s perceived value turns into your profits. Most companies don’t track discounts nearly well enough, and since value determines what a customer is willing to pay, discounts measure perceived value in the most concrete way.  magine tracking which customers, which salespeople, and which sales managers are responsible for disproportionate discounting—in addition to measuring what time of the month and which products.  

Lagging Measures vs. Leading, Predictive Indicators

Most companies measure customer satisfaction (CSat), and that’s as close as they ever get to customer perceived value. It’s good, but CSat is measured only after it’s too late to change. It’s a lagging indicator. You need to combine easy-to-measure lagging indicators with leading indicators that predict success.

Measure prospects’ responses to your specific differentiators—or better, differentiated outcomes. Those are leading indicators; predictive buying signals you can measure at the content engagement stage, during prospecting, throughout your sales process, through customer success measurement, to renewal rates…until they finally roll into that lagging measure, CSat. Now, you understand what causes satisfaction with high precision, and your metrics can guide marketing, pricing, and product development…you know,growth drivers.  Combine these with pricing discipline for profitable growth.

Want to talk? I can help you develop metrics that matter, including elite selling behaviors, forecasts, pricing systems, and growth rate. Email me at [email protected]. 

How to Identify and Quantify Value-Added Benefits to Maximize Your Competitive Advantage

Today's post is by David Jacoby, Managing Director at the Sales Readiness Group. Connect with him on LinkedIn.

 

 

Think of the last time you won a close, competitive sales opportunity. What tipped the scales in your favor?

In sales situations where it’s difficult to differentiate your solution from the competition’s, you often win by offering your buyer extra services, or value-added benefits. These are extra services beyond what you provide with your primary product or service at additional cost to the buyer.

Chances are you're already providing your buyers value-added benefits, but you're likely not getting credit for them.

Types of value-added benefits

Here are a few common examples of value-added benefits:

• Support services: services provided by your company, not by you personally. Such services include free training or a 24-hour customer service hotline.
• Consulting services: services that you offer, such as providing your expertise on use or implementation. But be careful! Consulting services can require an extensive time commitment on your part, so offer these only to high-potential accounts.
• Personal services: enhancements that you bring to an account. For example, you make an urgent delivery yourself. Some sales professionals simply tell their customers, “If you have a problem, just give me a call.”
• Promotional services: help you give to buyers to help them grow their business or do their jobs more efficiently. Examples include point-of-purchase materials, advertising, free samples, job aids or tools, and technical guides.

Use these categories to trigger your thinking and help you identify which value-added benefits you can offer buyers. Of course, any such value-added benefits should relate to the buyer’s needs— otherwise they won’t value it.

Quantifying value-added benefits

To maximize the competitive advantage that value-added benefits give you, it’s important that you quantify their value. Buyers will have a greater appreciation of your total offering when you identify and present the why value-added benefits actually add value.

Not all value-added benefits (e.g., personal services) have an obvious value. However, whenever possible, make them tangible and memorable by quantifying them.

Here are a few ways to quantify value-added benefits:

1. Benefit to buyer

When you can’t quantify the value the buyer receives, a back-up option is to quantify the cost to your organization of providing the benefit. For example, “Based on your volume, our free shipping will save you $500 per month.”

2. Convert numbers to bottom-line values

Try to quantify using dollars rather than percentages or time when possible. “This could save you up to $8,000 a month,” is more impactful than “Your efficiency will increase by up to 10%.”

3. Link value-added benefits together

Look for as many value-added benefits as possible. Often when you identify one benefit, it leads to others that you might not have considered.

Here is an example:

“To save you start-up time, which was one of your priorities, I’d like to offer you training and access to our high priority technical support. If you do have problems, you’ll be able to get access to a technician within one hour without any extra charge. Of course, if you have any urgent issues, you can always call me directly.”

Value-added benefits can make the difference between winning and losing in a competitive situation and help reinforce why selecting your solution is a good decision. So, before your next sales presentation, identify and quantify specific value-added benefits for your buyer.

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How Neuroscience Can Improve Sales Performance in Weeks, Not Years

Today's blog post is by Evan Sanchez. He is Sales Excellence Practice Lead of Think-X.

 

The changes to our working environment as a result of COVID-19 have been dramatic, to say the least. To find success in 2021, smart leaders are turning to neuroscience to identify performance gaps, make better hiring decisions, improve team performance, and reduce stress in a matter of weeks, not years.

Using neuroscience allows us to uncover thinking patterns that contribute to a high-performance mindset with a fast and scalable process. At first, you may think this is another assessment, but neuroscience diagnostics such as the Think-X Discover dive into the subconscious to find drivers of success as well as the barriers. Performance thinking barriers often sabotage underperformers and make hiring for performance-based roles very difficult. These tested findings and clinically validated activities are proven to create thought shifts that lead to better performance and less stress.

Why is this important to sales?

• In sales, A-players produce 5 times what a B-player produces and 10 times what a C-player produces.
• A-players typically produce 60-80% of all revenue, and they do it faster.
• You can invest in more sales training and more technology, but the ROI will not be maximized if barrier thinking is present.
• If you trade up barrier thinking you can recapture lost ROI from past training and technology implementations that failed to produce expected results.
• You can hire more efficiently and effectively.
• You can develop talent by improving the performance thinking.
• You can lower stress and anxiety that negatively impacts performance (perhaps needed more today than ever before).
• High levels of stress due to change can cause A-players to underperform and burn out.

How do you know you need this?

If your team has all had the same training on sales, product, or service, and you have followed your company’s hiring process, but you still have a wide gap between A-, B-, and C-players, you have to focus on improving the team’s mindset and performance thinking capability. The key performance drivers include:

• Ambition
• Confidence
• Emotional intelligence
• Empathy
• Systems thinking

Typically, the core performers (B- and C-players) have some of the key performance drivers listed above. However, barrier thinking patterns contribute to a negative or conflicting internal dialogue promoting a fixed mindset—the belief that things will never change or there is no need to change. In times of uncertainty and stress, this thinking can override learned behaviors as the stress triggers the flight, fight, or freeze reactive behaviors that lower performance. Most newly adopted training, agility, and capability to change goes out the window at this point.

This is caused by the presence of that barrier thinking and is often a blind spot. These blind spots – or what we call breaks – include: 

• High self-defeat
• High need for reassurance
• High controlling
• High skepticism
• High self-consciousness

What if we could identify the barriers holding one back from thinking and performing like the top 10%? 

That’s right: better thinking and better performance!

How do you start using performance thinking neuroscience strategies?

Each employee starts with a personal benchmark of score ranges in each of these performance drivers. By analyzing the profiles of the top 10% in each role, the data will point to conclusions about what these individuals have in common that makes them successful in the organization.  For an example, you can go here to see our most recent study and top performer templates.

Through a combination of individual and team data, managers can benchmark and measure performance drivers needed in the new remote environment, identify leaders, and provide employees with fast, accurate, and personalized feedback that can immediately impact their day-to-day activities. A much larger part of the core will become A-players. If you are a sales professional looking to improve your performance in 2021, please sign up for a diagnostic here.

If you are a sales consulting or training company, I suggest you reach out and explore our revenue generating strategies and partnering opportunities by contacting me to learn more by emailing me at [email protected].