Are You Sales Ready?

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Are You Sales Ready?
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Robert BlairSolutions for Sales447866
598859robert.blair_at_solutionsforsales.com
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What are we doing to our salespeople?

• Account management not sales
• Sell solutions not products
• Ever-widening portfolio
• Ever-growing sales quotas
• give them the brochures and let them work out
  how to sell it
• Not anymore

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What do Salespeople want to know?

• Why sell this solution
• Who to sell to
• Why buy it
• Competitive standing
• How to position to win
• How to qualify
• The sales process
• Who can help

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Why they should sell this solution?

• How would you describe a salesperson?

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Why they should sell this solution?

• Prove to me
• why I should
• sell your solution

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Who they should sell it to?
Suspects In real and time wasters

• Maximise the number of properly pre-qualified
  suspects entering the funnel

Prospects
time
Sales Out
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Who they should sell it to?

• Market segmentation
• Target markets
• Target accounts
• Pre-qualification criteria
• Buying triggers

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Why they will buy it?

• Success is all important
• This means that
• low risk
• quick results
• measurable benefits
• are always high on their priority list
• Notice price is not on that list

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Why they will buy it?
How do I get the best of both worlds?
Strong chance of a sale and a shorter sales cycle
but Less understanding of the potential ROI More
competitive sale Smaller budget
Vendor desires
Procurement desires
Longer sales cycle and more sales risk
but Greater understanding of the ROI Reduced
competitive pressure Bigger investment
Vendor helps customer realise they have a problem
Customer recognises they have a problem
Vendor shows them that their problem has a
solution
Customer surveys market for solutions to problem
Vendor proves that the solution works
Customer launches formal procurement process
Vendor shows that they are the best source for
solution
Customer selects supplier
Vendor and customer work together on an action
plan to solve problem
Customer negotiates price and places contract
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Why they will buy it?

• You want to enable the salesforce
• Find problems and opportunities
• You need to demonstrate how
• Solve and exploit
• Product marketing needs to explain
• who to call on
• the business issues/problems/pains/opportuntities
  to raise
• how your solution addresses each issue
• what results can be achieved

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Why they will buy it?

• A superior understanding of their needs
• Trust
• There is always a problem
• Future nothing is short-term

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Competitive standing

• 2 types of competitive information
• Salespeople wants
• Its not just product performance
• Prove it

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Competitive standing

• Who will win?

Scoring 1 Very poor 5 Very good You Competitor
Price 1 4
Total cost of ownership 5 3
Features 3 3
Score 9 10
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Competitive standing
Now who will win?
Scoring 1 Very poor 5 Very good You Competitor Weighting
Price 1 4 20
Total cost of ownership 5 3 40
Features 3 3 40
Weighted Score 3.4 3.2
Which would you prefer your salesperson to spend
their time changing the price, or the
customers weighting?
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Position to win

• You aint bragging if youve done it
• (Mohamed Ali)
• Proof points
• Knock-out points
• Reference visits

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Qualification
Relative effort
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Qualification
10
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Qualification

• Dont chase no-hope sales
• Converting a qualified prospect into a sale
• 10x the effort of qualifying the prospect in the
  first place
• Better qualification means
• Less is more
• Opportunity to close ratio goes up
• Qualified opportunities conversion ratio moves
  from 14 to 13
• Equivalent of 7 extra salespeople in a 100
  hundred person salesforce
• 7 quotas at 2 million per annum 14million in
  revenue
• Loaded cost/ person 200,000 1.4 million in
  cost savings

Do your salespeople have a qualification
check-list? Can you identify when they are
wasting their time?
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The sales process

• No two sales are the same
• Maybe there is a process e.g defined gates
• Warn against common pitfalls, e.g.
• Behavioural factors
• Late engagement
• Product Management
• Pro Svcs
• Partners

Can you tell your salespeople how a typical sale
runs?
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Who can help?

• Help people help themselves - save money -
  improve productivity

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Conclusions

• What do salespeople want?
• Gritty information that they can use with
  customers
• Facts, facts, facts
• What can we expect if we do Product Marketing
  better?
• Mindshare for your product
• More sales
• Fewer complaints from salespeople
• More active engagement with salespeople and
  selling

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Customer samples

• Advantica
• Amdocs
• A No 1. Land line carrier
• Cramer
• LogicaCMG
• HP
• Nortel Networks
• Nuance
• Openwave
• A billion Telco S/W company
• Thales

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