Author: Jay Mitchell



How Ongoing Training Impacts Your B2B Business’ Revenue Performance

March 8, 2018
Jay Mitchell

Read time: Less than 3 minutes.

Each employee impacts your business’ revenue performance. Your organization is the products and services it offers — and even more so the people who help grow and deliver your value to the hands of your target client.

When you invest in your people, you are investing in your revenue performance. Although many leaders value their employees’ continued growth, they often struggle to justify investing in that growth on a continual basis.

Question the value of ongoing training no further.

  • Companies that invest in comprehensive training programs have 24% higher profit margins than those who spend less on training (Association for Talent Development).
  • Employers who provide continuous training have 218% higher income per employee than those with less comprehensive training (Association for Talent Development).
  • Engaged employees outperform those who are not engaged by up to 202% (Dale Carnegie).

But do not waste your resources with training that will not make an impact. Be strategic with your training programs and realize sustainable revenue performance.

Implementing effective growth starts from the top.

In order for training to be effective, you must know what is broken. Even if it is not broken per se, you must understand where employees struggle, where they are less efficient, what areas are constantly changing and creating challenges.

Know your teams well enough to understand what your employees need to do their jobs better. This is an ongoing effort and requires you to revisit your different teams often. Learning and growing should be integrated into the rhythm of your role, as well as theirs, rather than pushing it off to a yearly session your employees snore through.

Also, as a business leader, you act as a model for your employees. Change starts at the top — and even more so behavioral change that delivers more desired outcomes. If you want to see your team improve, you need to adapt your own actions and constantly strive for growth and improvement as well. Take note from Ben Franklin’s five-hour rule, and you’ll be among many other business leaders such as Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Elon Musk and Oprah Winfrey.

Not all training is equal.

Business leaders may have invested in training in the past, only to be disappointed by the results, or rather the lack thereof.

Not all training is equal. Take sales training, for example.

  • Good sales training involves industry updates, new tools or process alerts.
  • Great sales training enables the sales team to learn new ideas that are absorbed as a team.
  • Exceptional sales training enables sales teams to learn new methods and techniques, and challenges them to practice (role-playing) time and again until positive change can be measured.

 

LEARN MORE ABOUT SUCCESSFUL SALES ENABLEMENT

 

With exceptional employee training, you should focus on how professionals are performing their duties and address the weaknesses in order to lead positive, measurable change. And with that measurable change comes sustainable revenue performance for your B2B organization.



The most important piece of a revenue performance goal: Collaboration

February 27, 2018
Jay Mitchell

Read time: Less than 2 minutes.

If you are the CEO, or the person in charge of developing your company’s revenue performance goal, you need to know your business — and I mean ALL of it. Knock on the doors of all the departments — from product marketing to accounting and from sales to product development — and get to know their piece of the puzzle. What is working? What is not working? How is staffing? How could they do their job better? What are they doing well that others could emulate?

Now do an inventory to help you understand what kind of goal would be healthy and achievable and bold at the same time.

To create a lasting and effective revenue performance goal, everyone needs to be on board. It needs to be in the interest of the whole team — the whole company. Everyone (every department head) needs to know about it and have a hand in crafting it. Where alignment is lacking, leverage this opportunity to get everyone synced.

The biggest barrier to creating these game-changing goals is the inability for departments to collaborate. Silos are still alive and thriving, despite the constant push and need for unity.

Unifying your organization around this common goal will spark collaboration in different areas. Furthermore, it will make this everyone’s goal, not just yours.

Be the catalyst for this needed change.

  1. Connect with every department head in the business. If you don’t know them, get to know them.
  2. Invest in understanding their role in the company
  3. Ask them questions and listen: What has been working? What are their major pain points? How is staffing? Could they be serving the customer better?
  4. Do an inventory to understand what kind of goal would be healthy, achievable and bold all at once.
  5. Share your goal across communication channels: Send out an email, share a report, announce it at a company-wide meeting.

As the leader, set the tone and take the lead in this effort.

revenue performance goal

The most-effective way to determine a revenue performance goal

February 14, 2018
Jay Mitchell
Read time: 3.5 minutes

Regardless of what your business does, what solutions is creates or the industry it serves, you and all other CEOs share a common business goal: to grow a profitable company.

Without money, your business cannot keep creating solutions to serve your clients, and your team cannot garner compensation for the value they provide to the business and to the clients.

The revenue performance goal takes into account every square inch of your business. It brings together every department. It is a unifying tool with which to measure your organization’s entire efforts against.

How can you craft such an all-encompassing goal?

Read below to learn the basics of setting a revenue performance goal your entire organization can rallying around and support.

STEP 1: Consider Your Team and Its Capabilities

Think about the employees your organization has in place right now. What value are they capable of creating? Are you willing to grow your organization to increase its capabilities if needed? Can your company handle this?

You want to set a goal that hits the sweet spot of your team’s capabilities. Shoot for a revenue performance goal that is too high, and you set everyone up to struggle for the impossible. Throw-out a revenue performance goal that is too low, and your team will start working below their abilities. Engage with the marketplace and with team to set the target so it accounts for market dynamics while also becoming your team’s objective – not just the one you set for them.

STEP 2: Consider Your Client

Be wise about what you can do to maintain your brand and client satisfaction. Your business exists to serve other businesses – that has to be fundamental to your purpose. Don’t think about quantity of revenue — think about quality.

STEP 3: Keep Your Entire Organization In Sync

The CEO and COO will lead the revenue performance goal, but that does not mean you should not bring in other counsel. Talk to other leaders. Keep your entire organization attuned to updates and the process. If you get everyone’s buy-in early, everyone will more-readily and full-heartedly strive toward the revenue performance goal set.

STEP 4: Think of Revenue Performance as a Business Model

When you hear “revenue performance goal,” is your first thought, How fast can we grow? I beg you to remember, not all revenue is good revenue. Look at all your investments and move forward with wisdom. Revenue performance does not just mean growing revenues but rather growing the value of the company by creating more value for your clients— and its sustainability. For some organizations, revenue performance is growth, while improving the profitability of the revenue is a better gauge for others.

STEP 5: Find the Optimal Top-line Revenue Number and Compound Growth Rate

Think about the total costs in investments required to meet your revenue performance goal. Remember staffing, campaigns, solution development, operating investments, etc. and their associated costs. And then think about how long it will take to reach that revenue performance goal. Say you want your company to reach $100 million in three to five years. What will it take to get there?

STEP 6: Share It

In order for your entire organization to be on-board with your revenue performance goal, you will have to collaborate along the entire process. You need everyone’s buy-in for this to spread its roots throughout your organization and burgeon into sustainable, focused efforts.

It is not too late in the year to set your organization on the right track to sustainable revenue performance.

 

Let’s Talk Goals

Revenue performance

Why revenue performance–based objectives drive more success for your B2B organization

February 8, 2018
Jay Mitchell
Read time: Less than 2 minutes

Business-to-business organizations tend to segment goals by department. The marketing department focuses on goals to generate leads. The sales department undertakes closing deals. The product department’s charter is a successful solution launch.

This seems logical enough, but these separate goals often create unconnected — and disjointed — efforts by all parties involved, such as:

  • Key information is not agreed upon or supported by everyone across your B2B organization.
  • Marketing does not generate the right leads.
  • Sales ignores the leads marketing generates and/or spends time generating their own or missing connections.
  • Product management fails to leverage lighthouse clients in the product launch beyond use validation and quality testing.

Most of all, these separate goals fail to reflect the overall buyer’s perspective and journey, which does not distinguish between marketing, sales, product, services and more, but rather expects a cohesive, compelling experience with your organization and solutions.

Revenue Performance Objectives Align Your Organization and Focus Your Team Members.  

When you bring your departments together with one revenue performance objective, you shift the mindset of all parties involved. All functions of the organization agree on important information regarding the target buyer, the value proposition and more, because they are aligned by a common compass – revenue performance.

When it comes down to it, all organizations are working toward one thing: To achieve sustainable revenue performance.

Learn More

And Revenue Performance Goals Do Not Just Mean Growth

Maybe your B2B organization has been growing for years — but you have your sights set on acquiring new, relevant businesses. Maybe you want to work on generating better-quality buyers for your solutions that equate to more profitable revenues.

A revenue performance objective can set a realistic, measurable path for your entire organization — one sales, marketing, product and everyone else in-between can strive for and stand behind confidently.

Stay tuned later this month to learn how to create and share a revenue performance–based objective for your B2B business. Or, contact me at jay.mitchell@mereo.co to review how revenue performance goals can apply to your business specifically.

social selling

How to use social selling to truly connect with your buyer

January 25, 2018
Jay Mitchell

Social selling has been a sales industry buzzword for the past few years, gaining steam in some circles the last six months – some even espousing it is the silver bullet to make selling (especially prospecting) “easy.” While these media may be relatively new to sellers and the sales industry as a whole, one thing remains and will always remain: The buyer demands to be seen, heard and genuinely served.

If your current opinion on social selling falls somewhere between “It is just a trend” and “Social media is for teenagers,” listen up: Social selling enables sellers to hyper-target prospects and establish rapport and trust through mutual existing connections and networks. It is also more efficient and fruitful than cold calling.

Buyers have more power than ever before to obtain information and build conclusions without ever speaking to a salesperson — and many do so online. Brands have the ability to influence what a buyer will find online, and so do their sellers.

According to research conducted by Jim Keenan of ASG,  78% of salespeople who use social media to sell outperform those who do not. The study also found that salespeople using social media met and exceeded sales quotas 23% more often as well.

Many business-to-consumer organizations have already discovered the benefits of selling with social media, however, business-to-business sellers have been left wanting for how to best leverage this tool.

Consider for a moment the power social selling puts in your, the B2B seller’s, hands to genuinely connect with your buyer.

You can connect with a buyer through social selling in a number of ways, through a number of social media platforms.

Take this scenario for instance: Your prospect has a problem he or she has not even considered fixing – arguably they do not realize they even have a problem. The prospect and you connect on LinkedIn through a mutual connection. Then the prospect sees your comment on an article in their industry, does some further research on you and realizes they do indeed have a challenge worthy of addressing and that your solution could be an option for helping him or her. The prospect reaches out to you for help.

Mark Fidelman of Forbes says, “A lead today can be someone complaining on Twitter that their current vendor is driving them crazy. It can be a question in a LinkedIn group. It can be an unassuming comment on a Facebook page. Today, leads are far more than a call from a friend, a business card from an event or a chance encounter on a flight.”

Social Selling has potential to influence a buyer’s journey — if used wisely.

According to Forrester study, Social Selling: A New B2B Imperative, the majority of B2B sellers use social media to expand their network of contacts, generate leads, and listen and learn about buyer preference and needs.

Since social media has infiltrated the majority of our society’s lives, many of your sellers will be familiar with using Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook already. They just may need to tweak their strategy to achieve optimal social selling potential.

Here’s how:

  1. Maintain a consistent message across all media, across all sellers

    If Henry posts one thing about your solution on LinkedIn and Gerome says another, brand confusion will ensue. Ask marketing to help provide your sales team strong messaging points about the brand, the solution/s, and the value and differentiation. Make sure to get your sellers’ buy-in on this messaging, otherwise they might never use it. On the same front, consider employing a social media strategy that helps guide and protect your organization’s messaging.

  2. Know who your target buyer is, and have strategies in place for your sellers to meaningfully connect with them.

    Sellers need to understand who they are targeting, where they can target them and what is an appropriate method to communicate per social media. They also need to understand the conversation needs to be about “them” (i.e. the prospective buyer), not “us” (i.e. the seller). Urge your sales team to ask more questions, to listen to answers and comments, and to respond with thought and compassion rather than offering a sales pitch.

  3. Encourage your sellers to genuinely build relationships, no pitches attached.

    While sellers need to adhere to the company’s messaging, they also need to use their own voice and personality on social media. People like authenticity, especially buyers.

    Also, sharing relevant and interesting content is what gets buyers interested. sellers who join relevant Facebook or LinkedIn groups, comment with insight and value, and respond to questions or dissent find more success than those who provide pitch after pitch.

    Consider implementing an enablement session to help your sellers navigate between their own authenticity and your company’s messaging.

  4. Know where social selling lies in the sales funnel.

    Social selling is not the end all, be all. It is a way to make that first connection, start to build a relationship and to help lead the prospect into the sales funnel.

While it is easy to knock social media, these tools have the potential to connect us to more people than we have ever been able to before. Buyers are not as receptive to many of the traditional selling techniques used in the past. They prefer to go down the sales funnel by their own doing — which often means they log into their Facebook accounts or open LinkedIn. Will your sellers be there to start and engage in a conversation?

2017 reflection

A reflection on 2017

January 18, 2018
Jay Mitchell

We are already 11 days into 2018, but I cannot let 2017 slip too far behind me in the rearview mirror without first showing my gratitude, kudos and more.

This past year Mereo celebrated its 10-year anniversary.

This was an incredible milestone for our team, and I am grateful for each client and interaction that has allowed us to do what we love for 10 years that, broken down, looks like:

  • 521 (roughly) weeks of aligning sales and marketing teams.
  • 3,650 days of fostering relationships with sales and marketing leaders and business visionaries.
  • 87,600 hours of seeking to serve, in both a professional and personal capacity.

The anniversary offered a great opportunity to reflect on the goals of Mereo and how things have grown and evolved. Seek to Serve once had been a sentiment I heard my parents saying, and now it is the backbone of what Mereo stands for and who our principals are.

 

Download Our Seek to Serve E-Book

 

Mereo continues to serve upstanding clients — and for that, I am so very grateful.

Let me first take the opportunity to highlight a sampling of the companies (as we cannot share everyone we work with publicly) Mereo had the privilege of partnering with for the first time in 2017:

  • Adaptive Insights
  • Axway
  • Edify
  • FARO
  • Heartland Payment Systems
  • HireRight
  • Ingram Micro
  • Sweetbridge
  • TwentyEighty Strategy Execution

It has been an honor to be a part of your teams. We don’t take this responsibility lightly, and we look forward to another year of growth and success as we impart the true value of “seek to serve” to your organization.

This past year, Mereo made headlines with:

And I made a big move personally.

My family and I sold our home in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and moved back to Austin, Texas, to be closer to family and to re-kindle friendships. This is also now where Mereo’s headquarters reside.

Overall, thank you to the clients I have had the opportunity to work with and befriend, Mereo principals both seasoned and new who uphold the seek to serve purpose and who multiply the efforts and calling of Mereo, and all the other people in-between who make my job such a blessing. Mostly, thanks to my beautiful bride, Stephanie, and our four gifts – I couldn’t hope for better teammates in life than our “Sic ‘em Six.” I treasure being your husband and dad and appreciate the freedom you give me to “be the first to serve and last to be served”!

2017 turned out to be a record-breaking year for Mereo, and I cannot wait to see what this year has in store.



{B2B News Network} How to identify the right product differentiator to boost marketing and sales success

January 8, 2018
Jay Mitchell

One of the biggest challenges for today’s seller is helping their buyer understand their product or service’s differentiator — in other words, what makes it  better than others that walk, talk, look and act like it.

None of us wishes for our solutions to be thought of as an imitator or second-best. We want our business to be in the forefront of our target buyer’s mind — our products or services gaining an unfair share™ of the market.

Think about your solution from a buyer’s perspective. When you are offered an option between yours and a competitor’s solution, what makes them different — truly different? Why will one perform better than the other? What makes one more valuable than the other? How does one serve you and your specific needs better?

Surely you have the answers about your own solution, but does your buyer?

Today’s B2B buyer is more empowered than ever before. They research your solutions deeper and seek a variety of options. Fifty-seven percent of the buyer’s journey is completed before the buyer talks to sales (Corporate Executive Board).

While many sales and marketing leaders believe their company’s product or service is clearly differentiated, their key selling proposition may not be as obvious to those on the outside. And what some brands say differentiates their solutions may not make them as different — or compelling —to the specific buyer as they think.

In order to ensure buyers understand how your solution is different from others, you have to determine the key differentiators. These already exist, but it is a matter of crystalizing the most compelling differentiator for your solution and your buyer.

  1. Differentiator 1: Unique
    If your product offers a solution like no one has ever seen — bingo. You have a jumpstart on differentiation. Do not fret if your solution is not completely unique. Dig for that one thing about it that is truly different. Perhaps your business model increases your unique factor. Or a specific capability or your packaging or distribution channel. Dig deep and find that one thing that makes your product truly different from your competitions’.

For the full article, visit B2B News Network…

 

Read More

 



{SMM Article} The No. 1 Thing Leadership Can Do to Align Marketing and Sales

January 4, 2018
Jay Mitchell

In order to learn how to align marketing and sales teams, we must understand how devastating a gap between these departments can be for an organization overall.

Sales and marketing are both vital to a B2B organization. Both departments play a role in connecting with, engaging and landing buyers.

Despite the gap, these two departments share many of the same concerns and end goals. Sales and marketing both work to:

  • Engage a buyer.
  • Deliver the organization’s solution to the buyer.
  • Meet organizational goals.
  • Help buyers reach their goals.

Yet, in the face of all these shared goals, 60 to 70 percent of content that marketing creates goes unused by sales, according to the Content Marketing Institute. And salespeople spend an average of two days a week – upwards of 40 percent of their time – creating their own content (CMO Council). B2B companies who struggle to align sales and marketing teams around the right processes have lost upwards of 10 percent or more of revenue per year (IDC).

How can organizations align their sales and marketing teams? How can they be different than most?

Sales and marketing leadership can align their teams by example: Through collaboration. Even within an organization, it is easy to experience department divides. The sales team is us, the marketing team is them and vice a versa. While competition is not a bad thing even within an organization, leadership should work to keep sales and marketing from competing with one another, and rather encourage their collaborating and working together.

Communication Is Key

The first step leadership can take? Talking to one another regularly…

Read the full article at Sales and Marketing Management. 

 

Read More



End 2017 with positivity and purpose

December 14, 2017
Jay Mitchell

As the year comes to a close, you are probably finding yourself recapping what you and your team achieved in 2017. And while you may be considering many points of success and achievement, I’m sure your areas of desired improvement and goals for 2018 are just as long. This can either make you a pessimist or a good leader. How you communicate this to your team will be the deciding factor.

Whether 2017 was filled with missed quotas or benchmark successes, as the leader of your team, YOU have the power to create change and move into 2018 with positivity and purpose.

Here are four ideas to do this well

  1. Make time to listen to your team.

Sure this might not be your usual time for team reviews, but there is something about the close of the calendar year that has everyone reflecting and thinking ahead. Capitalize on this natural thought process and make time to sit down with your sales team, or at least 1-2 of your strongest and weakest players. And instead of using this as an opportunity for you to share what you want from them in 2018, come prepared with a few questions and just listen. Here are a few ideas:

  • What was your greatest success in 2017?
  • What was the biggest challenge you faced?
  • What would make your job easier and more rewarding in 2018?
  • How do you hope to grow in 2018? How can I help?
  • How can we serve our client better in 2018?
  1. Prove you were listening and RESPOND.

Listening is the easy part. Now what your team really needs is for you to respond—to act on their pain points and do what you can as their leader to equip them for the year ahead. Are there tools they need? More trainings? A better understanding of the solution they are selling? Make these things happen. Sure, they come with a cost, but investing in your sales team will be the best decision you make moving into the new year. As their leader, it is your role to equip and support and lead – this is how you best serve them, and thus serve your clients (through them). It can be easy to lose sight of this when the year is closing and everything gets busy. Take time to sit down and plan how you can provide the needs of your team before January comes and everyone is wrapped up in sales kickoffs.

  1. Thank each person individually.

Each person. Even your weakest team member. Even the team member with which you tend to disagree. Look them in the eye and thank them for being on your team and shake their hand. Ask them what their plans are for the holidays and listen to their answer.

Your team is your responsibility, and caring for them and serving them should be of upmost importance.

  1. Host a holiday lunch.

If you ran out of time in 2017 to make this happen, shoot for early 2018. And if you are unable to get off site, gather in a meeting room with easy catered food. Use this as another opportunity to show your gratitude for your team. No need to make it complicated with cheesy games or cheap gifts they are going to toss in the trash on the way out (who really wants another coffee cup with your company’s logo?), just plan a simple time to share a meal with your team, and take 10-15 minutes at the end to share the vision for 2018. Give them a reason to come back after the holidays—a vision they can get behind. If possible, share some company insights and remind them why your company is worth working for.

You have the power to launch your team into the new year with positivity and excitement. And, most importantly, you have the power to equip them to improve personally and professionally in 2018. Step up to the plate.

 

 



Incentives and bonuses aren’t the cure alone: Encouragement, listening and support are free

December 7, 2017
Jay Mitchell

Incentives and bonuses motivate sales professionals for good reason. But great sales leadership calls for more than monetary rewards.

A Gallop study revealed that 50% of employees leave their company to get away from their bosses.

So, unfortunately, it is safe to say salespeople leave their job to get away from their chief sales officer. A CSO can throw all the incentives and bonuses they want at their team to keep their top performers around, but that strategy alone will get costly. Plus, who is to say that sales professional will not find those same monetary rewards with another sales team?

There is a better — and a more cost-effective — way to keep your sales team engaged and in it for the long haul. And these strategies all center around being a better sales leader and seeking to serve your team of sales professionals.

Good sales leadership: Speak to salespeople to the tune of incentives and rewards.

Great sales leadership: Listen to your salespeople and support the growth of their individual qualities and career objectives.

According to Salesforce Research, employees who feel their voice is heard while on the job are nearly five times more likely to feel empowered to perform their best work.

Leaders often think in terms of hierarchy when they really should be thinking in more of a hive mindset, where the whole team is using their individual talents to reach a shared goal.

Encourage your entire sales team. Affirm and congratulate them when they succeed. Ask them about roadblocks they are facing and help them problem solve. Remember to provide them constructive feedback, to keep their skills sharp and their career moving forward. This is your goal as a leader: to keep the individulas you are leading moving forward— growing and becoming better sales professionals and better people.

Good sales leadership: Encourage competition between salespeople by offering the top seller a bonus.

Great sales leadership: Encourage your team members to work together and seek to serve their teammates.

Sure, healthy competition can produce good outcomes, but what can occur over time, if this strategy is ongoing, is a bevy of sales professionals operating on their own islands. Make collaboration and teamwork a part of this coming year’s leadership strategy. Encourage your sales team to share insights and tools and success stories. Encourage your team to participate in discussions and in feedback. Foster an environment of teamwork and camaraderie where your sales professionals feel comfortable to go to their peers for advice or problem solving. Remind your team they are working together toward the same end, and each person’s success is a success for the whole team.

“Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress and working together is success.” Henry Ford

Good sales leadership: Focus on the bottom line of the company.

Great sales leadership: Instill a “seek to serve” culture into the core of your team – driving the bottom line.

If you and your entire team care more about seeking to serve the buyer, prospects and one another, the bottom line will naturally benefit.

But this “seek to serve” mentality won’t go far if it doesn’t start with you—their leader. If you make serving your team your number one prioirty, you will be sure reap the reward of a flourishing and successful sales team. Sure, this doesn’t happen over night, but you can take one step each day. Start by asking your team how you can help them sell more effectively. Listen and respond.

There are hundreds, thousands maybe, of good sales leaders out there. You have the opportunity to step out of the crowd and be great.

Make Your Salesforce Unstoppable