Complex Sales

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Complex Sales

• John Marsh

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Agenda

• Learning Model
• Industry-wide Competitive Analysis
• Politics, Relationships and Behavior
• A Strong Sales Team
• The Sales Plan
• Executing the Plan
• Your Sales Preference
• Theory and Tools

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Learning

• Levels and self-assessment

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Continual Learning
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Level 1 - Knowledge

• Have information in your mind or memory.
• What.
• When.
• How.

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Level 2 - Comprehension

• State or retell your knowledge in your own words.
• Paraphrase.
• Summarise.
• Condense.

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Level 3 - Application

• Apply your knowledge in new and varied
  situations.
• Prove.
• Illustrate.
• Demonstrate.

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Level 4 - Analysis

• Study and interpret the results of your
  applications.
• Examine.
• Investigate.
• Interrogate.

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Level 5 - Synthesis

• Revise your theories and methods based on your
  analysis and create new ideas.
• Develop.
• Modify.
• Improve.

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Level 6 - Evaluation

• Draw reasoned conclusions based on synthesis.
• Judge.
• Consider.
• Compare.

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Competence Matrix

• Open Matrix

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Industry-wide Competitive Analysis

• Michael Porter

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Exercise 1

• Complete an Industry Competitive Analysis
• Competitors
• Potential Entrants
• Buyers
• Suppliers
• Substitutes

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Industry Competitors

• Training
• Network Integration

• ISP
• Development

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Potential Entrants
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Buyers
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Suppliers - Carriers
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Substitutes
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Strategic Positions

• Low Cost
• Differentiated
• Focused (Niche)

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Quote

• Being all things to all people is a recipe
  for strategic mediocrity and below-average
  performance, because it often means the firm has
  no competitive advantage at all.Competitive
  Advantage, Porter, M. E., Free Press, 1985.

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Positioning

• Positioning your company as a solutions company
  rather than a product or tools company can
• Lower risk
• Increase trust
• Shorten sales cycle
• Increase repeat business

Acknowledgement Rick Page
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Understand the Politics, Relationships and
Behavior

• In the potential client

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Internal Stakeholders
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Political Navigation

• Who are the key decision makers?
• What are the political, social, economic and
  technical trends that could influence your
  client?
• Do you manage client relationship?
• Do you predict political changes in your clients
  organization?

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Customer Behavior

• Peak
• Trough
• End Theory

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The Complaints Mushroom
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Poor Customer Care

• 63 of buyers go to alternative suppliers due to
  quality of interaction with people not due to
  product or service quality.

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Poor Customer Care

• Acquiring a new customer cost 5 times that of
  retaining an existing one!

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Logic versus Emotion

• Customers are far more emotional than we care to
  admit.
• What is the emotional or personal political
  benefit of your proposition?

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Exercise 2 Select a Target Client

• Select an existing target client
• Identify all the internal stakeholders involved
  in the selection of the solution.
• Understand their personal wins or losses from the
  possible solution

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Understand the System

• Who are my customers customers?
• How can I add value to both?
• How does the industry fit together?
• Are their potential strategic partners?

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Executive Concerns

• Strategy
• Finances
• Politics
• High-level Operations

• Brainstorm

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Exercise 3 Barriers to Sales

• Brainstorm all the current barriers to sales
• Produce a Fishbone Diagram where the symptom is
  too few sales

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Exercise 4 Prioritize Barriers

• Paired Comparison

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Build a Strong Sales Team

• Multi-Disciplinary

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Complex Sales Process

• Create a Team Strategy and Plan
• Enter high
• Understand the business listen
• Trap the competitors weakness
• Use PDSA all the time
• Sales Close Out whether success or failure

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Effective Leadership
Acknowledgement John Adair
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More Basics

• How do you ensure customer satisfaction?
• How do you create and monitor a strategic plan?
• How do you build strong relationships within your
  organization?
• How do you organize appropriate social activities?

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Creativity Techniques

• Thinking Hats de Bono
• Creative Pause
• Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?
• How? How?
• Future base
• Provocation

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De Bonos Thinking Hats

• White Information Gathering
• Yellow Positive
• Green Creative
• Red Emotional
• Black Appraising
• Blue Monitoring Thinking Styles

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Skunk Works

• Background
• Developed by Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co.
• Very Complex Sales
• Shorter shorter response times to RFPs
• Greater cost consciousness from client

• Method
• Separate from the rest of the Company
• Anything goes high levels of creativity
• Rapid Idea Testing
• The best Engineers
• Stealth

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The Sales Plan

• A Winning Process

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Qualification

• Profitability
• Profit maximizing or sales maximizing
• Risk
• Failure Modes Effect Analysis
• Pareto
• 80 of profit comes from 20 of sales
• Stocking Fillers

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Conceptual Sales Process
Sales Strategy Plan
Act on Lessons Learnt
Team Implementation
Review or Close Out
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Basic Strategies

• Preemptive
• Create demand
• Sole supplier relationship
• Full Frontal
• Killer application
• Flanking
• Changing or expanding the issues

• Fractional
• Get a toe hold
• Timing
• Delay or accelerate

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Six Keys

• Link the solutions to Pain
• Qualify the Prospect
• Build competitive Preference
• Determine the decision-making Process
• Sell to Power
• Communicate the Strategic Plan to team

Acknowledgement Rick Page
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Win / Win
Acknowledgement Stephen Covey
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The New Game

• The new game is based on the ability to help
  solve significant business problems for the
  customers.
• If you want to play, competitive advantage lies
  in helping your customers make money, save money
  or add value to their organization.
• Understanding your customers business strategy,
  market forces, and financial situation is the new
  core competence.
• Larry Wilson, Stop Selling, Start Partnering

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Seek First to Understand

• I keep six honest serving-men (They taught me
  all I knew) Their names are What and Why and
  When And How and Where and Who.
• Rudyard Kipling

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Features Benefits

• Features what the product can do
• Benefits what the product can do for the
  internal stakeholders
• Operational
• Cultural
• Financial
• Strategic
• Political

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Decision Making Process
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Preference Spectrum
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SBO Stating the Bleeding Obvious

• People buy from
• People they like
• People they trust
• People who are enthusiastic
• People who are knowledgeable
• People who believe in their product
• People who go the extra mile

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Planning Quotes

• It is a mistake to look too farahead. Only one
  link of the chain of destiny can be handled at
  one time.
• Winston Churchill
• Its not the plan thats important, its the
  planning.
• Dr Gramme Edwards

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Executing the Plan

• Do

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Ten Laws of Team Selling
Acknowledgement Rick Page

• Different methods for different levels
• Right people in right roles
• Grow from teller to partner
• Different paths to partner level
• Acquire new skills and attributes

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Ten Laws of Team Selling
Acknowledgement Rick Page

• Allocate sales team to how customer buys
• Dont put tellers and farmers into
  competitive situations without a hunter
• Dont waste hunters on farming
• Losing account managers means loss of
  relationships
• Everyone must know the sales strategy and plan

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Study the Effectiveness

• And Close Out

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Study

• Strengths

• Areas for improvement

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Your Sales Preference

• A model by Rick Page

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Sales Professionals

• Industry- Networked Consultant
• The Partner
• The Business Developer
• The Farmer
• The Hunter
• The Teller

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The Teller

• Dashes to the demonstration
• Tells rather than listens
• Presents product before understanding the
  business needs

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The Hunter

• Loves obstacles and competition
• Has acute nose for politics
• Often not focused on repeat business

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The Farmer

• Generates repeat business
• Is often the Project Manager
• Everyone sells

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The Business Developer

• Develops demand rather than react to it
• Finds latent business problems
• Creates a Vision of what life could be like

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The Partner

• Deming Point 4
• Minimize total costs with sole supplier
  relationships.
• Essence is Trust and Trustworthiness
• Covey
• Solves higher level business problems for client

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Industry-Networked Consultant

• Contacts throughout the Industry
• Executives see him or her as an advisor
• Published books and papers
• Speaks at Conferences

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Basic Theory Tools

• Without theory there can be no learning

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Relevant Quotes

• Profit comes from delighted customers boasting
  about your product or service and bringing their
  friends with them.
• Dr Edwards Deming
• Time spent on reconnaissance is seldom wasted
• A friend

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Coveys Seven Habits

• Be proactive
• Begin with the end in mind
• Put first things first
• Think win/win
• Seek first to understand than be understood
• Synergize
• Sharpen the saw

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Tools

• Benefit Maps
• Strategies Plans
• Contingency Plans
• Value Propositions
• Product Information
• Differentiators
• PEST Analysis
• Power Maps

• Industry Competitive Analysis
• Focus PDSA
• Cause Effect Analysis
• FMEA