Author: Jay Mitchell



How to reshape the sales funnel and increase wins

January 5, 2016
Jay Mitchell

How many times have you seen the iconic sales funnel used in a demonstration or sales training? I’m sure more than you can count. If you are like most, this age-old diagram, and the sales psychology it stands for, has molded your understanding of the sales process — it certainly has impacted mine. In its simplest form, the martini glass-shaped sales funnel demonstrates the logic that the more leads you acquire, the more deals you will land.

Sure, this is rational and true, but is it the smartest way to think about acquiring leads? What if the traditional funnel was shaped more like champagne glass, suggesting you could acquire less leads, yet land as many, if not more, wins? (See image above.)

By changing the sales funnel to a champagne flute shape, we are suggesting sales teams spend less time generating demand, and more time capturing and shaping it — engaging qualified leads instead of quantity leads. By taking the time to seek qualified leads within target market segments and accounts (champagne flute), instead of chasing a large quantity of unqualified leads from both target and non-target market segments (martini glass), you can actually reach your goals more quickly and waste less time with leads that are unlikely to convert.

To be clear, for any sales managers reading this, the argument is not that a large quantity of leads is immaterial; rather, focusing so intently on quantity can distract sales professionals from the real objective — REVENUE PERFORMANCE.

Benefits of a Re-Shaped Funnel

The traditional model (martini glass-shaped funnel) is founded on sales professionals using a shotgun approach — covering a wide area, getting as many leads as possible. This approach is focused more on the quantity of leads, instead of quality. Here they may be seeking, let’s say, 100 leads, but because the leads have not been strategically sought out and selected due to their relevance, few will actually result in closed deals.

Instead, the re-shaped funnel suggests sales professionals invest the necessary time to target 10 qualified leads. This method requires them to be prescriptive in the leads they choose, and spend adequate time on the front-end understanding their ideal buyer profile and buyer pains before engaging their lead. Yes, this method takes more time per lead, but by being more strategic and dedicated in going after the right leads, the win rates increase.

Many sales leaders use set metrics to plan on a specific number of deals, (example: you need 330 leads to win 28 deals). This strategy is inefficient. By employing this approach we often force our sales teams into a position of seeking out unqualified leads because, if we are honest with ourselves, there may not even be 330 companies that fit your buyer profile in the assigned territory. Instead of relying upon ratios, help your team identify and engage qualified leads from the start. Engaging only those audiences who align with your buyer profile saves your front line sales team valuable time, as it is a role that marketing and sales operations can partner.

Pursuing Quality Leads from the Start

Investing in quality leads might sound like a good idea, but many teams are left unsure of where to begin. Most marketing and sales teams have habits and leading practices they have been using for years to fill their pipelines — cold calls, webinars, tradeshows and the list goes on. Attempting new methods for finding and engaging leads can be daunting and be time consuming — but remaining stagnant in your pursuit of leads will hurt you over the long haul. Spending more time up-front, preparing your team to engage with the correct profiles, may be just what you need to increase margins and increase sales productivity.

Correct Buyer Profile 

One of the biggest mistakes sales and marketing teams can make from the beginning is going after the wrong buyers. Creating a buyer profile will set strategic parameters and provide guidance for teams, enabling them to apply their sales tactics in context of their strategy and ideal buyer. Below are three major components of a successful buyer profile:

  1. The audience must have fundamental problems your solution addresses.
  2. The organization should have a problem that is big and bad enough to address.
  3. The buying persona(s) you are engaging must have the authority to take action.

For more information on buyer profiles, see my post: Derailing the Deal, Part 1: Wrong Buyer Profile

Revenue Performance in Action

Let’s look at a real-world example: A large manufacturer of peripheral technology equipment found its win rates and average sales price deteriorating to the point that they missed their revenue targets for three straight years. Our team worked with them to conduct a go-to-market workshop in which they solidified their target profile, identified the issues their ideal buyers were facing and created the differentiated messaging their sales channels needed to use to communicate a crisp, concise and compelling value proposition. The organization later realized the following game-changing results:

  • Pipeline for field sales professionals increased 194% within two months of roll-out; and
  • Year-over-year bookings grew 76%.

Re-Shape to Win

While slowing down and taking a step back may seem counterproductive, the time and resource investment to reach quality leads has proven time and time again to be a worthwhile practice. What would it look like to re-shape the sales funnel for your team? Investing in quality over quantity leads will change your day-to-day, but more importantly, it has the potential to increase your overall win-rates. Why not give it a try?

This article was initially written for Top Sales World’s November 2015 Magazine. 



Stay sharp over the holidays: 4 great reads

December 15, 2015
Jay Mitchell

Whether you will be busy traveling to see family, or hosting a house full of in-laws this holiday season, you may want to sneak away for some quiet, “you” time. If you find yourself with a few spare minutes, here are some great pieces from our friends, and leaders in the industry, to get your mind ready for 2016:

Tibor Shanto: @TiborShanto Award winning author, speaker, B2B sales execution specialist.

Tamara Schenk: @tamaraschenk Sales enablement leader and analyst, and Research Director at CSO Insights.

Matt Heinz: @HeinzMarketing Author and nationally recognized, award-winning blogger and President and Founder of Heinz Marketing.

Jonathan Farrington: @TopSalesWorld Keynote speaker, business coach, author, consultant, and sales strategist, and CEO of Top Sales World. 

From all of us here at Mereo, we want to wish you a very, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. May you find refreshment and joy in this holiday season. We look forward to being a part of your 2016. 



Derailing the deal, part 5: No value proposition

December 1, 2015
Jay Mitchell

Do you ever feel like your deals are heading down the track toward success, but then somehow end up not closing and falling apart? What is happening between point A and point B? What is derailing your deals? In part five, the final installment of this mini-series, we are going to look at another common issue that causes deals to miss the mark:

  1. Wrong Buyer Profile
  2. Unqualified Buyer
  3. Status Quo Wins
  4. Me-Too Positioning & Messaging
  5. No Value Proposition

No Value Proposition

Value-oriented selling approaches are the gold standard—they have been for years. In fact, we could make an argument that most sales methodologies employed in B2B selling environments today are based on a simple premise: if the gain is greater than the pain, then the buyer will take action. If it is that straightforward, then why do just 42% of all selling organizations have a “formalized value proposition that is very compelling to prospects,” compared to 92% of world-class organizations (CSO Insights)?

If we dig deeper behind those disheartening research findings, we find the root cause as to why value-oriented selling has not driven the results we all want to see.

A compelling value proposition for a buyer has three components that build upon one another: pain, solution and gain. The interwoven story of these three elements distinguishes world-class sellers from the rest of the field.

93% of world-class organizations state “We clearly understand our customer’s issues before we propose a solution,” compared to just 48% of all organizations (CSO Insights).

Pain

Before your buyer can ever buy from you, they need to understand they have a problem…an issue…a pain. Solutions do not matter at this point. Why? Because if they do no recognize they even have a need, then they do not need a solution. In essence, if a seller fails to amplify the buyer’s pain threshold, then “status quo” wins, an issue we reviewed earlier in our series.

Sales managers believe 53% of reps “need a major redesign” or “need improvement” in linking solutions to the needs of individual stakeholders (CSO Insights).

Solution

Once the buyer is aware of their pain, and, after giving it careful consideration determines it is worth addressing, then they are ready for a solution. The solution proposed by the seller in a value-based exchange needs to link back to the buyer’s pain, and it needs to be distinguished from the other alternatives the buyer is evaluating in their buying cycle. Those two components characterize a compelling solution, by addressing the buyer’s current situation and differentiating itself from competitive offerings – something we examined earlier in our series when we reviewed the pitfalls of me-too positioning and messaging.

54% of sales leaders said their sales teams “need improvement” in building a solid business case and/or ROI for their company’s solutions (CSO Insights).

Gain

That takes us to the gain. Over the years, sales and marketing executives have made strides in shifting the focus of their proposals from features and functions to the benefits of those capabilities. That transition has been accelerated by formalized “value engineering” disciplines that have sprung-up within the go-to-market teams of many B2B organizations. This function has focused much of its energy on developing “business cases or ROIs” for their solution rooted in the benefits a buyer can expect to achieve with their solution. That sounds like a great way to close the loop on the value proposition model. Why do so many need to improve their business case/ROI? The business case does NOT link back to the pain. The argument includes two of the pillars of a complete value proposition – our solution delivers these benefits – but not all three – for example, for organizations experiencing these pains, our solution helps the buyer achieve these gains. Without the pain, the benefits may sound good, but they alone often fail to get a buyer to move from their current state to the future state. Further, the differentiated solution provides the bridge from the doldrums of that current state to future state nirvana.

This three-fold value proposition equation is how the buyer justifies their purchase – first to themselves, then to their peers, other stakeholders and ultimately higher up their chain of command. When sellers fail to connect all three elements of a value proposition into a “three-part harmony” they do themselves and their prospective buyer a disservice by allowing the buyer to accept today’s situation as good enough.

Do not let your value proposition derail your deal. Tie the entire story together so you win more and your buyer suffers less.

If you enjoyed this series and would like to discuss how we can help your team keep your deals on track, please contact us: information@mereo.co

 



Derailing the deal, part 4: Me-too positioning and messaging

November 18, 2015
Jay Mitchell

Do you ever feel like your deals are heading down the track toward success, but then somehow end up not closing and falling apart? What is happening between point A and point B? What is derailing your deals? In part four of this mini-series, we are going to look at another common issue that causes deals to miss the mark:

  1. Wrong Buyer Profile
  2. Unqualified Buyer
  3. Status Quo Wins
  4. Me-Too Positioning & Messaging
  5. No Value Proposition

Me-Too Positioning and Messaging

If you have done your job as a seller in the discovery stage with your prospect, then your buyers are no longer giving “status quo” any real credence as an option. In essence, you have helped the buyer answer two of the three core questions they must answer on their buying journey:

  • Do we need to do anything at all?
  • Do we need to do anything now?

If you are confident your buyers can answer yes to the first two questions, then comes the final core question:

  • Why should we choose you and your solution?

In discovery, you (and your prospect) may not know the answer to this question yet, but you should have a good idea of what the answer may be. Ideally, the line of questions you employed in discovery helped “leave a crumb trail” for your buyer to follow. Even more so, while you have not been selling your solution to the buyer yet, you have unmistakably added value for the buyers to this point, and have laid a critical foundation to “why us?” in the credibility and trust you have established.

The battle before you as a seller is to distinguish your solution from the other competitive alternatives available, and the true fight is to overcome the “me-too” conundrum. What is the “me-too” conundrum, you ask? Let’s look at the definition for “me-too” for some guidance:

Main Entry: me-too
Pronunciation: ‘mE-‘tü
Function: adjective
Definition: 1: marked by similarity to or by adoption of successful or persuasive policies or practices used or promoted by someone else 2: similar or identical to an established product (as a drug) with no significant advantage over it. (Source: Merriam-Webster Dictionary)

Research from CVI reinforces the challenge before many organizations in a competitive selling environment.

  • Only 17% of sellers believe their pitches are truly different from the competition.
  • Nearly 48% of sellers believe their pitches are not focused on the right things, making them a commodity.

Ouch! If that is what sellers believe, imagine how “me-too” you sound to buyers since differentiation is gauged in the eyes of the beholder.

In essence, you lack differentiated positioning and messaging to employ against your competition.

For centuries, many have considered Sun Tzu’s The Art of War an indisputable compilation of strategies and tactics for garnering success in military combat. Many view the ancient Chinese general as a strategic genius and we can draw corollaries from Sun Tzu to sales excellence. One of Sun Tzu’s more recognized quotes relates to “terrain” — that is the positioning of a military force in relation to its (competitive) surroundings: “Terrain can be distant or near. It can be difficult or easy. It can be open or narrow. It also determines your life or death.” Your competitive positioning and the related messaging framework you employ can also “determine your life or death.”

Because of many outside factors and the competitive nature of a sales cycle, you will never completely be in control, meaning each cycle requires careful analysis and thought. Winning sales professionals analyze their surroundings within a sales cycle, then apply their distinctive capabilities within that dynamic to create an unfair competitive position™. They do so by trivializing the strengths of their opponents, then changing the game in the mind of the prospect using differentiated concise and compelling messaging, while aligning with their own advantages. This truly determines your victory or defeat in a sales cycle, or as Sun Tzu called it, “life or death.” Equally important, once you establish your presence and maintain an advantageous position, it is very difficult for your competition to overcome that unfair position and permeate the client for future opportunities.

A common mistake in establishing competitive differentiation is failing to recognize (and communicate) what is common and what is different in your offerings. Weaker organizations too often “drink their own Kool-Aid” and employ solution messaging based on “me-too” traits that are easily countered by the competition. On the contrary, top sales teams constantly evaluate their uniqueness and seek to prove or disprove the validity of the answer by testing the messaging with buyers and key buying influences, including company insiders and third-parties, such as analysts and the media. Where no clear differentiating elements exist, changes are made in the solution, or the solution may be enhanced through bundling with other products and services to achieve that differentiation.

What factors do we need to take into account in order to create an unfair competitive position™ and the corresponding differentiated messaging framework? There are four attributes of a differentiated message — Unique, Valuable, Provable and Memorable — and it takes ALL FOUR to be a true differentiator.

Take a few minutes with your team to perform a simple test on your messaging to assess whether it is differentiated or not by first brainstorming your solution’s differentiators. Then, grade your differentiators using all four attributes mentioned above.

  • Unique: Is it truly different from the competitive offerings your customer is evaluating?
  • Valuable: Does the solution (or capability) provide value to the buyer?
  • Provable: Can we clearly prove the value of the uniqueness through a client story and/or demonstration?
  • Memorable: Is the message concise and crisp enough that my buyer can remember it and effectively defend it to others in their organization without my direct participation?

Do not be disappointed if your initial list of a dozen differentiators gets whittled down to 1-2 once you put them through the filter. It is OK as you only need one differentiator to win and ensure you are not just another “me-too” to your buyer. Or as Sun Tzu said: “You must engage only in winning battles. Position yourself where you cannot lose. Never waste an opportunity to defeat your enemy.”

Sun Tzu likely would have characterized it this way: a world-class sales team will position itself uphill from its competitors with the sun and wind at its back, making it difficult for the enemy to attack, let alone win a battle!



Derailing the deal, part 3: Status quo wins

November 3, 2015
Jay Mitchell

Do you ever feel like your deals are heading down the track toward success, but then somehow end up not closing and falling apart? What is happening between point A and point B? What is derailing your deals? In part three of this mini-series, we are going to look at another common issue that causes deals to miss the mark:

  1. Wrong Buyer Profile
  2. Unqualified Buyer
  3. Status Quo Wins
  4. Me-Too Positioning & Messaging
  5. No Value Proposition

Status Quo Wins

Who is the biggest competitor in your sales cycles? If you are like most sellers, the answer is undoubtedly not who, but what: “Status Quo” — AKA No Decision. Why do organizations, and their leaders, stick with the current state — no matter how bad that may be — rather than embrace the opportunity to enhance their success? The answer lies more in how those organizations are sold to than in how they buy.

In a quota-driven, “what have you done for me lately” sales culture, so prevalent in organizations today, it is easy to lose perspective on the true PURPOSE of selling — to solve a problem/pain. The outcome of a sale is 1) a problem resolved for the buyer and 2) revenue for the seller. That is the value equation in its simplest form, yet it is easy for sales professionals to be overwhelmed by the pressures around them, like securing a contract signature for the week/month/quarter. When a seller falls into this trap, the tendency is to rush the sales cycle and race into solution pitches, before ever helping the buyer understand the problem that can be solved. When the value equation starts with “no problem/pain”, the end result is inevitably “no solution/gain”, and thus no contract.

Where in the sales cycle are sales professionals missing the mark? It is in discovery, where the buyer is trying understand why they should do something at all and why they should do something now. Most B2B sales professionals approach the discovery stage of their sales cycles laser-focused on gathering information about their prospect. This is absolutely a critical component of discovery, and something you should do to the point of exhaustion before meeting with the prospect. Although you want to gain key nuggets from the prospect while you are with them, there is a much more important objective to accomplish when you are one-on-one with your buyers. If we consider the buying journey, what is the buyer’s goal at this point in their process? The buyer wants to gain a better understanding of their need(s), and in many cases, determine if they even have a true problem that needs to be addressed. As a result, they are asking themselves questions like: “Do I have a need?”, “How is that need impacting my organization/my team/me personally?” and “Who is impacted by not addressing that need?”

Knowing these are the questions a buyer is considering while interacting with you, the seller, it is critical you take this opportunity to help them gain a better understanding of their need(s) and the consequences that need is having on their organization/their team/them personally.

We can crystalize the objectives of the discovery phase of a sales cycle to three steps:

  • Identify the critical issues the prospect is facing
  • Surface and intensify awareness of the pains associated with those issues
  • Help your buyer internalize the pain

If you take these three steps, you will help your buyers realize “status quo” is an unacceptable option for them to consider. And although you may not help them choose you over another tangible competitor, you will undeniably establish and deepen your trust/credibility with the buyers, as you are helping them discover a path toward success.

There is also a physiological element to “status quo winning” that needs to be considered. In his book Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain, Neurologist Antonio Damasio says: “Scientific research is clear: without emotions, humans are incapable not only of rational thought, but are rendered unable to pull the trigger on even the simplest of decisions.”

Proactively engaging buyers using positive conditioning can sway the involuntary responses humans have in our favor as a seller. HOW we sell (our behaviors) are as important as what we are selling. What does this mean for us? Arguably the most significant driving force for every buyer is selfishness. As a buyer, I am selfish. As a buyer, you are selfish. Through a dialogue, if we can help the buyer garner insight into their real needs – not just the symptoms they are too often experiencing daily – they win, and thus we win. In fact, we are likely positioned to win the pursuit without even getting into the solution.

The best way to bring insight to your buyers is to help them gain a more accurate reality into the pains their underlying need is causing. There are three categories of pains that sellers need to activate within the buyers.

  • Business pains are typically associated with symbols, such as % and #. They are measurements including: declining customer satisfaction levels, deteriorating department reputation, lost market share and higher employee attrition.
  • Financial pains are typically associated with currency symbols such as $, €, £ and ¥. They often are directly correlated to the business pains, and include performance metrics like higher operating costs, lower revenues and increased customer acquisition/retention costs.
  • Personal pains typically associate with the symbols : ( , : ) and !, and this is ALWAYS the pain that matters most to a buyer. Examples include reduced compensation/bonus/equity payouts, increased threats to job security and reduced personal time/quality of life.

When status quo wins, a seller has too often failed to tap into the real driver for the buyers, their “personal” pain threshold. As we discussed earlier in this series (Wrong Buyer Profile), we first need to engage in marketing and prospecting activities with organizations that have a problem big and bad enough to address. Targeting buyers with characteristics and attributes that would likely be battling the underlying challenges and issues your solution addresses is foundational. But, as sales professionals, it is equally — and maybe even more — fundamental that we embrace the opportunity to help the buyers recognize they even have a problem. All the signs may be pointing to it, but unless we enable them to internalize the true pain of their current state, “status quo” will be continue to prevail.



Derailing the deal, part 2: Unqualified buyer

October 20, 2015
Jay Mitchell

Do you ever feel like your deals are heading down the track toward success, but then somehow end up not closing and falling apart? What is happening between point A and point B? What is derailing your deals? In part two of this mini-series, we are going to look at another common issue that causes deals to miss the mark:

  1. Wrong Buyer Profile
  2. Unqualified Buyer
  3. Status Quo Wins
  4. Me-Too Positioning & Messaging
  5. No Value Proposition

Unqualified Buyer

The same expression used in part 1 “barking up the wrong tree”, could also be applied to this issue, but with a very important twist… While the ideal buyer profile provides some guideposts for where marketing and sales should direct their resources, ultimately the selling organization must decide if the lead demands further investment. Making this judgment is a common angst that arises not only between the marketing and sales teams in “lead hand-off”, but also between sales management and field sales professionals. The determination of whether a lead — and further in the sales cycle, a pursuit — is qualified or not can often be determined by examining four simple factors.

A lead is qualified when, and only when, it meets all four of the following criteria:

1) The Problem is One You Can Solve: The target organization and buying audience must have an issue related to a fundamental problem the selling organization can solve. In some scenarios, the buyer may not even recognize that it has a problem yet, but the selling organization’s marketing and/or sales teams know that the symptoms they (and hopefully the prospect) are witnessing are clear indicators of an underlying problem their solution addresses.

2) Charter Exists to Solve the Problem: The buying audience must have both the budget and authority to solve the problem. In too many cases the deal is doomed from the beginning because the buying organization does not have a budget assigned. This is not always a “go/no-go” sign, as long as the prospective buyer has the ability to create the budget — often by shifting resources earmarked for another initiative to this one. The mirror image of this in today’s procurement-laden buying cycles is a buyer who has the budget, but does not have the authority to invest that budget. While the budget is allocated to them, a senior member of the organization — the CFO, for example — can step in and repurpose that budget for other means or shut down the budget all together. This does not necessarily mean that the CFO, in this case, is your buyer, it just means that you have to bring forth a compelling value proposition for that investment. (More on that later in this series.)

3) Decision Maker has a Sense of Urgency: While your buying audience, and the decision maker in particular, may have the charter to solve the problem (both the budget and authority), they may not have a compelling timeline to do so. For some buyers this is as simple as them not believing the problem is big enough RIGHT NOW to address. There may be more pressing matters vying for their attention and the resources under their control. For other buyers, the selling organization has not yet struck a chord with the buyer’s personal pains. While business and financial pains are fundamental to making a compelling case to address the problem, the marketing and sales teams of the seller still have to embrace the fact that every business decision a buyer makes (on behalf of their organization) is grounded in the personal downside/upside quotient. Sellers who fail to activate the personal pains of their buying audiences do so at the risk of their own peril.

4) Decision Maker will Take a Meeting: In today’s “committee” buying decisions, there is often a multitude of people involved in the purchase process. In fact, CSO Insights surveys of buying and selling organizations have shown a trend to more and more players involved in the buying committee.

 

(Source: 2015 CSO Insights/MHI Research Institute Sales Best Practice Study)

While the roles and responsibilities of these players vary, there are often 1) “researchers” doing the initial exploration on solutions, 2) “recommenders” who dive-deeper into those solutions and their applicability for the buying organization and/or 3) “reviewers” who take the research and recommendations into account — as well as their past experiences and expertise — to reach a conclusion. When all three of these constituents come together as a committee, some of the roles can blur, but all three are present to varying degrees.

As the selling organization, it is imperative to secure a meeting (preferably face-to-face for more sophisticated solutions) with all members of this buying trio in order to activate their business, financial and personal pains directly. This also allows a selling team to deliver the differentiated value proposition of the solution to the buyer’s problem. As a general rule, when a selling organization is unable to garner those meetings, red flags should be going up that the lead/opportunity is not qualified.

The most direct, and often simplest, manner to qualify a lead is to have a brief conversation with the prospect about the problem. Most importantly, if the lead is not qualified, discontinue active engagement with the lead, or identify the appropriate means of nurturing the lead through a more scalable investment of time and dollars.

Making sure the lead you are pursuing meets all four of the these criteria will keep you from wasting time chasing after unqualified buyers. How well are you applying this filer in your lead qualification efforts? Are there any criteria you would add to this list?



Derailing the Deal, Part I: Wrong Buyer Profile

October 2, 2015
Jay Mitchell

Do you ever feel like your deals are heading down the track toward success, but then somehow end up not closing and falling apart? What is happening between point A and point B? What is derailing your deals? In this mini-series, we are going to look at 5 different, yet interdependent, common issues that cause deals to miss the mark:

  1. Wrong Buyer Profile
  2. Unqualified Buyer
  3. Status Quo Wins
  4. Me-Too Positioning & Messaging
  5. No Value Proposition

Wrong Buyer Profile

Do you know the expression “barking up the wrong tree”? Engaging the wrong buying audience is just that—”barking up the wrong tree”, and if you are not careful, it can waste lots of precious marketing and sales resources. A buyer profile is intended to set strategic parameters and provide guidance, and it is up to the judgment of the marketing and sales teams to apply the ideal buyer profile in context of their strategy and tactics. When marketing and sales teams are executing their respective campaign and prospecting activities, it is imperative they do so with a focus on buying audiences that include the following:

The audience must have fundamental problems the seller’s solution addresses.

The most common mis-step that surfaces in buyer profiling for marketing and sales teams is the ineffective use (or lack) of a buying organization profile. The organizational profile is intended to represent a collection of characteristics that would likely be present in an organization faced with the fundamental problem the seller can solve. These characteristics include key demographic data, (e.g. industry, size, geographic region) as well as markers within publicly-available information about this organization (e.g. SEC documents, press releases, articles in the local business journal) that convey symptoms of the root-cause problem. Marketing and sales teams can leverage these characteristics to build a universe of organizations that should be the target of their campaigns and prospecting initiatives.

The organization should have a problem that is big and bad enough to address.

Based on market research and insights gleaned from having solved the problem for similar organizations/personas, you are confident this organization — and this buyer in particular — is embattled with many of the same underlying challenges and issues. If not, they will likely not be compelled to engage in any “problem solving” activities. For example, an organization that distributes an email newsletter once a quarter is likely satisfied with a service like Constant Contact. Attempting to sell them a multi-million dollar marketing automation system with all the bells and whistles would probably fall on deaf ears, and constitute a mis-placed use of limited go-to-market resources.

The buying persona(s) you are engaging must have the authority to take action.

We will get into qualification a little later in this mini-series, but at this point, it is about identifying prospective decision makers, stakeholders and influencers whom you would expect to have the clout to help their organization make a course correction. If you are marketing a solution that would likely require final approval by the Senior Vice President of Operations, and continue to find the “buyers” in the room to whom you are proposing a solution are IT system administrators, you need to reexamine not only your qualification process, but more critically your buyer profile.

Keep your deals on track by making sure your prospective buyers have these three characteristics, and you will save your team valuable time, energy and resources.



3 Summer must-reads

August 5, 2015
Jay Mitchell

Summer may be winding down, but I encourage you to take advantage of the quiet days you may have left and check out, or re-read, some of these great books. The following resources have helped grow me in my professional journey, and have afforded me the opportunity to garner some nuggets of wisdom and insight on critical topics and disciplines. We should never be too busy to read — it is how passion is reignited and new ideas are born. The books below are beneficial for all positions, from coordinator to president.

1) Selling 101 (Zig Ziglar)

Selling 101 is an exerpt from “Ziglar on Selling” and provides a concise snapshot of the fundamentals of selling. Moreover, it’s about selling with integrity by putting your customer’s interests above your own in order to achieve a true win/win. If you are new to sales or a seasoned pro, pause for a moment in your daily chase to revisit the tenets of selling and selling well.

 2) Differentiate or Die (Jack Trout)

This book highlights the importance of “differentiation” not only in marketing messaging, but through the entire sales cycle. This is one of my favorite business books because Trout lays out why it is pointless to go-to-market with a product or service hoping the buyer will uncover its greatness. More importantly, marketing and sales is not only about effectively communicating to your target buying audiences what your product or service can do, but why it is different and why that matters to them.

 

 

 

3) The Goal (Eliyahu M. Goldratt)

It’s truly not a business book, but a novel. When I was leading solutions marketing at i2 back in the late 1990s, this was “orientation reading” for every employee. Jonah helps Alex fight to save his plant and the jobs of hundreds of his co-workers by embracing the underlying principles of the Theory of Constraints (TOC). More than a supply chain book, this is a fast-paced, must-read for managers across all industries about how to balance the most important factors in the pursuit of operational excellence.

 

 

 

Which book(s) would you add to the list?



How to hold an effective buyer and referral panel

June 16, 2015
Jay Mitchell

Gaining the attention of buyers in a noisy marketplace can seem impossible. Sure, it may be easy to fill the pipeline, but are you having a hard time converting those leads to wins? As discussed in one of our previous posts, the old strategy of filling the pipeline just isn’t the smartest method anymore.

Investing in qualified leads will pay off much more than just filling the funnel. I’m guessing this isn’t a new idea for you, but maybe you are curious how you are supposed to go about finding these qualified leads.

Finding quality leads starts with learning more about your customer and prospective customer. The more knowledge you have about them, the better prepared you are to execute marketing campaigns that will effectively engage them. Your sales execution will also be much more successful as you add value for them.

One of the more creative approaches being employed is engaging a referral or buyer panel. In addition to enhancing your knowledge of the marketplace, these panels can help grow your referral base and build relationships with potential buyers, if executed effectively. Panels are a great way to ask questions and receive insight you might not capture in a conversation. They also position you and your sales team as a resource for a panel member’s future needs.

84% of B2B decision-makers start their hunt using referrals. (Source: American Association of Inside Sales Professionals)

1) Hold a Referral Panel

A great way to make new connections and become a referred source is engaging the external parties that have the ear of your buyers.

  • WHO do you invite? Vendors and trusted partners of your target buyer (e.g. accountants, lawyers, bankers, associations/affinity groups).
  • HOW do you reach out/engage: Be part of the community in which these partners operate, and find ways to add value in their “watering holes.” As you get to know them, ask them out to an informal coffee/lunch. Make the invitation about them, getting to know them and helping serve their needs.
  • WHAT is their incentive for engaging with you: They can learn more about value they can bring (directly or indirectly) to their client(s).
  • WHY hold this panel: Building these relationships will put you and your team at the forefront of their mind when they are talking to your potential buyers.

2) Hold a Buyer Panel

It can be easy to fall into the trap of only engaging your current customers and using them as your sounding board. It is great to understand why they chose you and continue to do business with you, but their views can be biased, and their opinion of you is too often based on previous experiences, current relationships and future needs.

Instead, it can be extremely beneficial to engage people who are not current customers. This valuable approach can give you and your team unbiased answers and opinions.

  • WHO do you invite? New (desired/non-existing) customers.
  • HOW do you reach out/engage? Again, be part of the community in which your buyer audiences operate. As you get to know them, ask them out for an informal coffee/lunch to learn more about their industry, their business and/or their role. Be sure to make this engagement about them and understanding their Do not lead with your products or solutions.
  • WHAT is their incentive for engaging with you? You could possibly solve some of their current problems. Ask what solutions they are exploring. Your primary goal is to learn more about their pains and understand their needs, not sell your product. Let the selling happen naturally.
  • WHY hold this panel? This is a great way to make an introduction and showcase your solutions in a way that doesn’t feel like a sales pitch.

Building relationships is key to building a quality pipeline. If you hold a panel, go into it without expectations, and to purely serve others and build communities.



How to sell to millennial buyers: 3 myths dispelled

June 9, 2015
Jay Mitchell

If you go back 5-10 years, buying committees were generally 3-5 people: CFO, line of business executive and a stakeholder. Findings from MHI Research Institute’s 2015 Executive Summary proves this is dramatically changing:

“In a typical deal, the number of decision makers is increasing…To continue to be successful, sales professionals must broaden their knowledge base to be able to connect with and influence the variety of people involved. ” (MHI Research Report 5).

There are several reasons for this growth in the “buying team”, but today we are going to take a closer look at some of the new stakeholders participating in these buying committees: millennials.

“46% of b-to-b buyers are now millennials, up from 27% in 2012” (Source: AdAge)

Millennials aren’t just an upcoming generation to be studied and analyzed for how they might impact business practices someday—it is too late for that. They are aging into business and already a part of the B2B buying world. Millennials may be users of the product you represent, in mid-management at a client company or even the head of new company you are prospecting. Therefore, there is a good chance a millennial will be a part of a buying team with which you are engaging.

There is a lot of buzz about this immensely influential demographic, and along with the buzz, comes a lot of false accusations and stereotypes. We wanted to bring you the facts, so we analyzed a recent study by IBM To Buy or Not to Buy: How Millennials are Reshaping B2B Marketing to disprove common myths and to help gain a broader understanding of how to engage with millennial decision makers.

Here are 3 myths we believe this report dispelled, and takeaways for selling to millennial buyers:

Myth #1 Millennials are calling their BFF when researching a business buy.

Although millennials are wildly social when it comes to their consumer decisions (93% bought a product after hearing about it from a friend), they place more stock in vendor relationships with it comes to business (IBM 4).

“This is not about listening to a sales pitch. It’s about having authentic, personalized interactions to explore possibilities and get questions answered. Providing relevant experiences, both virtually and in person, will go a long way with Millennials, who will share their excitement with their coworkers”(IBM 5).

The study goes on to show that when it’s time to make the final purchasing decision, millennials are putting the same amount of stock into research and analytics as they are the opinions of friends and family.

  • Takeaway: Although reaching the influencing audience of millennials (friends and family) poses a big challenge for sales teams, it proves the importance of engaging millennials in those first research steps where they are more attainable and influential.

Myth #2 Millennials don’t know how to communicate face-to-face and would rather just correspond via text, IM or through other social media platforms.

Millennials get a bad wrap when it comes to communication. I’m sure you have heard a baby boomer make a comment about “kids these days…always on those cell phones…don’t even know how to talk to each other anymore.” While there is merit to the assumption that millennials are constantly on their phones, this doesn’t necessarily mean this is always how they like to communicate, especially when it comes to business.

69% of millennials said they would prefer a face-to-face meeting when engaging with a vendor during sales research. But, after they gather the information they are looking for, they are more interested in keeping the interactions quick, virtual and on their own terms. When it comes to decision-making time, it seems they want their space and don’t want to be nagged. They will go to the sales rep when they are ready to connect again (IBM 7).

  • Takeaway: Be accessible, but don’t be annoying. As myth #1 proved, millennials are definitely interested in real relationships with real vendors, but you need to find ways to be authentic in person and virtually. Take the time to meet with them face-to-face in the beginning, but follow their lead as the sales cycle continues. Make yourself available for questions via IM or text, equip them with the information they need and then don’t be afraid to back off and let them make the next move.

Myth #3 Make a millennial mad, they will make you pay in angry social media rants.

Many people assume that because millennials are the champions of using social media, they are also the champions of abusing it. This can be true, but for many millennials, they have seen the negative impacts, and maybe even been on the wrong side of a damaging social post, and they aren’t interested in joining in on the juvenile use of this powerful platform, at least when it comes to business interactions.

“They will sing a vendor’s praises, but are quite reluctant to post anything negative. Older generations are twice as likely as Millennials to voice their frustrations online.” (IBM 10).

  • Takeaway: Make it easy for millennial clients to engage with and access you online. If they have a good experience, they will want to share it with their peers, and making that step as seamless as possible will be of great benefit to you and your organization. Send them a link to your company’s blog, pass on your Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn handles, but remember not to be cheesy and praise-seeking. Invite them in, but don’t force their hand. Also, consider highlighting them on your blog by writing a success story about them, or use them as a client study. This would be great content for them to in turn share with their social contacts.