If you’re a sales manager or CEO, send this to the entire sales team and put them on notice that they will be held to account. If you’re an individual sales contributor, address all of these issues now to save your career. I’m serious – stop screwing around with your success; be the professional you’re paid to be. Here are the things (in no particular order) that make your boss look bad and you look amateurish.

1. Not being across the detail of your key deals. 

Stop giving long-winded waffling answers when asked about the status of an important deal. The senior executives above you are busy and don’t want a bedtime story. Be succinct in your responses. Start at the end and provide a summary before diving into detail. Say something like: ‘It’s forecast for the 13th and their executive sponsor has confirmed with me that the date is confirmed with their internal team. Everyone in the power-base is on board and procurement is in the loop. There are two risks that I am managing…’

2. Failing to have a strategy. 

Never use the words ‘hope’ or ‘hopefully’. In every major deal you need to be thinking about what could go wrong and manage the risks. You must have a strategy for relationships, the competition (including their internal options), and engineering their processes for evaluation, selection and procurement. Hope is not a strategy. Being passive and failing to create any level of positive tension is professional malpractice. You’re not a professional visitor or observer who reports back. Make it happen by building positive relationships with the right people inside the customer organization.

3. Failing to work hard. 

Sustained success is never the result of consistent luck. Work ethic is prerequisite for anyone performing at the top. If you’re not ‘blowing your numbers away’, then you sure as heck had better be seen to be working hard. Work ethic is what smooths out the peaks and troughs of sales performance; to be consistent month-in and month-out. The time to be working hard is when you don’t feel you have a weak pipeline of qualified opportunities – things change quickly. earn your success with the sweat of your brow. Look yourself in the mirror, and your boss in the eye, knowing you’ve earned the right to be successful.

4. Wasting time and being late for meetings. 

Every meeting should have an agenda and confirmed in advance. Time is precious. If you can’t manage yourself, how in the world can you manage complex sales processes and expensive company resources. If you don’t respect the time of others, why should they respect you? Being on time means being at least 5 minutes early. Sit in a nearby coffee shop and prepare, think, plan – take the stress out of meetings. Arrive early and stake the perfect seat, arrange the room. Every pilot knows that their mind must arrive well before the plane if they are to be truly professional.

5. Failing to take notes and follow-up. 

It staggers me how often I see sales people not taking any notes in meetings. ‘I have a good memory’, they say. I don’t care if you have the memory of an elephant! It’s about the customer, not you. They need to see you being fully there and vitally interested in their every word. Taking notes also enables you to break eye contact (the only reason you should) and show them that they are important, that you don’t want to forget, that you’ll follow-up, that you’re a professional. Imagine how you would feel if a builder came to your home to provide a quote for your big renovation and he didn’t measure anything and failed to write anything down… ‘I have a good memory love; no worries, she’ll be right’… Next!

6. Not using sales tools provided to you. 

Your company has invested huge sums of money in sales methodologies and tools… use them! By all means pragmatically, but use them nevertheless. Show people that you’ve qualified the opportunity and that you have actions in play to address weaknesses and gaps. Complete call plans and share with your boss before all important meetings. Build close plans on all the big deals to show you understand the customer’s internal approval gates, procurement processes, compelling events and dates. Here is an ideal meta framework for opportunity management.

7. Not keeping the CRM up to date. 

How can you claim to be a professional when the CRM shows that the deal is still at qualification or discovery stage yet you submitted the proposal last week? Why is the CRM ‘next step’ something that is trivial and happened 3 weeks ago? Why are all of your forecast close dates the last day of the quarter? Professionals keep their records up-to-date to help their boss help them – if you want the resources of the organization invested to help you pursue big opportunities, then earn respect and support by how you operate. How can marketing assist you with inviting prospects to events if you don’t bother to put them in the system. Why should you be allocated any more leads when most of the ones you’ve been given are languishing in the CRM without any notes or change in status? No wonder so many marketing and management people have low opinions of sales people.

8. Being a shocking lone wolf. 

Being a lone gunslinger cowboy may suit your persona but success in complex enterprise selling is always a team effort. It’s amazing what can be achieved when you don’t care who gets the credit. Work well with others; collaborate and be a team player. If you read between the lines, The Challenger Sale says to fire Lone Wolves when they start missing their numbers.

9. Being a ‘Social Selling’ illiterate. 

LinkedIn is the new phone for securing appointments. Your LinkedIn profile is the platform for establishing your credibility before you even meet. Your LinkedIn Publisher posts are how you set the agenda and deal with objections in advance. Twitter is how you amplify your insightful publishing to spread the word. YouTube is how you avoid having to do high risk, time wasting, tire kicking, mind-numbing, Russian roulette high risk demos. Social selling is highly relevant in the world of B2B enterprise selling… get on board before your career sails away without you!

10. Failing to create the necessary value to fund your role. 

One of my European clients did an extensive study concerning the cost to the company every time a sales person pulled-up outside a client’s premises. Field selling is expensive… here is the answer $476. The number is accurate – they have annual revenues in excess of $1 billion in Australia and hundreds of sales people. They asked two questions of every manager and sales person in the company: When you visit a customer or prospect, are you creating $500 of value for them and us? If you asked the customer and your boss to split it; $250 each – would they be willing to both write you a check?

11. Breaking the circle of trust. 

Lying to your boss is the beginning of the end of your relationship with them. Trust is everything – with customers, colleagues, your partner, everyone! Without trust you have nothing in professional sales. Your personal reputation is the most precious thing you have. Who is in the mirror staring back at you? Is there a look of conviction or an empty suit hoping not to be found-out. Don’t cheat your boss out of time or steal their money. Be honest about the state of your deals.

12. Inaccurate forecasting and fantasy pipeline. 

Everyone above you has the living crap beaten out of them when they miss their numbers. It felt like I aged a whole year at the end of every quarter when I was managing the region for American corporations. Regular ugly surprises at the eleventh hour make heads explode. Squirming out of commitments damages you enormously… be a person of your word and don’t over-promise. Bad news early is manageable but consistently delivering ugly surprises at 3 minutes to midnight is terminal – for you or your boss.

The post 12 Reasons Why You Should Be Fired appeared first on Head Of Sales.

I’ve worked with thousands of sales people in many different industries. Professional selling is changing rapidly with technology-driven automation and commoditisation resulting in more than one-third of sellers losing their jobs in the coming years.

For any sales person to prosper in their career they need to move beyond being good at building relationships to also embrace the holy trinity of sales mastery:

• Lead with insight as a domain expert
• Create tangible business value for clients
• Leverage technology to be effective and efficient

Make no mistake, relationships alone are not enough. Buyers today are busy and stressed. They are not looking for new friends. They instead want greater value from fewer relationships. They care about how you can help them achieve their goals and manage their risks.

Lead with insight: Don’t wait for your employer to hand you mythical silver bullets… you instead need to self-educate by researching and writing about the disruptive and transformative trends in your customer’s world.

If you can’t write then you can’t sell.

There are four reasons to create and publish content:

1. Educate yourself and develop domain knowledge and expertise
2. Connect with industry leaders to build your sphere of influence
3. Attract clients and an audience to support your business goals
4. Build your personal brand evidencing credibility, value and insight

In an online world we are known by who we associate with (connections) and what we publish (insights). According to IDC research, 75% of buyers research the seller before engaging. What do they see when they view your profile? Do they see a credible domain expert worthy of trust and an investment of their time or do they see a mere salesperson? We must create own own narrative that sets us apart and earns engagement at the most senior levels. It is vitally important to publish thoughtful posts in your LinkedIn profile.

Creating business value: Move away from talking about who you are, what you do and how you do it to instead lead with why a conversation matters. What business outcomes can you deliver for them and what risks can you manage?

The language of business is numbers not words

Lead with why it is important and what it can do for them at a business level. Have evidence to support your claims. Know your best customers and why they decided to implement change within their organization. Understand their business case and the challenges they faced in change management. Bring this wisdom to new prospective clients and set an agenda that sets you apart from the competition.

Leverage technology: The best sales people combine proven old world practices with modern ways of executing. Building relationships and evidencing credentials and value can be done online. Buyers expect the sellers to arrive having done their research. Don’t waste the customer’s time asking them to educate you about publicly available information. Embrace a social selling framework to modernize the way you sell.

Social Selling Definition: The strategy and process of building quality networks online that attract clients and accelerates the speed of business and efficiency of selling, as achieved with a strong personal brand and human engagement through social listening, social publishing, social research, social engagement, and social collaboration.

Also use your company’s CRM system better than anyone else. Work with marketing for lead nurturing with automation tools that keep prospects in your orbit without you annoying them or them wasting your time.

While sales individuals need to focus on ‘sales mastery’, the sales organization needs to focus on ‘sales enablement’.

Sales Enablement

Most businesses do a good job in segmenting their markets, customers and products but what is often missed is the insidious impact of commoditization. Every product or service becomes a commodity over time as features that once differentiated drift back to parity as competitors catch up. According to Corporate Executive Board research, 86% of the time that sellers pitch their ‘compelling value,’ buyers perceive it as neither unique or compelling but merely features also offered by other suppliers. Every business needs to look at itself from the outside – how do customers really view us comparatively? If you sell a commodity, then face the awful truth rather than cling to expensive sales models where customers are unwilling to pay for the low value and high costs associated with a field sales force.

There is no such thing as a high margin commodity and the value they offer must stem from insight and wisdom rather than mere information and service. The first law of selling is that people buy from those they like and trust. They then seek best value and lowest risk. The key for every seller is to understand that ‘value’ and ‘risk’ are all defined by the customer. In selling, we are delegated down to people we sound like and this means that salespeople need to learn the language of leadership if they want to engage at senior levels. They need to be equipped to discuss the business case, delivering outcomes and managing risk.

If a product or service is a commodity then the sales model should be engineered accordingly; make it easy for the customer to obtain information, become convinced and then transact in a way that’s easiest for them including web, phone or channels. For products and services that actually are high value solutions then force the field sales team toward value through insight. Support them in developing domain expertise, genuine insights and business acumen to enable them to operate at a higher level. Product marketing needs to focus on differentiating what is being sold; and sales people need to differentiate by how they sell.

What are the critical elements of sales enablement and how do you create a framework for effective sales execution? There are three essential ingredients plus the catalyst of sales management leadership. The three ingredients are sales methodology, sales process and technology platform.

Few people can articulate the difference between methodologies and process yet these elements are distinctly different in complex B2B selling.

Methodology is the framework for formulating strategy and tactics to win; it’s also how you create your competitive deal strategy, identify risks, cover the political power base within the relationship map, and identify the best way to create compelling value for the buyer. But which methodology should you use? There are a number of well-proven methodologies including TAS, Miller Heiman, RSVPselling, and others. Success with methodology does not depend on which one you select but simply on how well you use it for opportunity coaching with the team.

Process is how you build a sales funnel and execute the sale; it’s how you qualify opportunities and progress through the deal stages with discovery, proposal, demonstration, closing, contracting, on-boarding and then doing win/loss reviews and case studies. Process steps need to be supported by the right tools such as a call planner, qualification tool, discovery questionnaire, proposal templates, win/loss review forms, and territory and account plan templates.

Platform is the technology you use to enable and automate your sales methodology and sales process. It is where you have a single source of truth about customers and opportunities. It must also be your coaching platform where there is transparency concerning pipeline depth and opportunity quality. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software is the ideal platform but CRM needs to be a strategy, not just a technology and reporting tool. To be implemented successfully, it must go beyond the mere functions of accounts, opportunities, pipeline and forecasting; it must instead enable the mapping of relationships and force discipline in deal stage progression with qualification scoring and action tracking. It must also include close plans with customer validation of critical dates. Finally, CRM needs to incorporate tight integration with both marketing, social (such as LinkedIn) and after sales support to provide a single view of the entire customer lifecycle from targeting, marketing, lead nurturing and selling through to account management, support, service, satisfaction and upselling.

This approach uses CRM to place customers at the heart of everything you do and provides the platform for being truly customer-centric. It also delivers transparency with deal quality and revenue predictability. It’s where sales people manage their opportunities and the tool that sales managers use to coach their people. This approach is designed to serve the sales people in improving their efficiency and effectiveness. Because it provides them with value and enables their manager to coach for improved win rates, they actually populate the systems with accurate and useful information.

When CRM is implemented with customers and sales people as the priority, and when it’s the platform for deal coaching and the enabler for sales process; then system success is assured. The synergistic outcome for management is accurate reporting and revenue predictability. The corollary of this is that CRM failure comes from implementing it as a reporting tool with poor alignment to sales methodology and sales processes. Many CRM implementation fail and it has nothing to do with the technology provider; here are the critical success factors for successful CRM:

• Obsessively focus on the system serving sales and customer support staff
• Integrate with social platforms such as LinkedIn and InsideView (for easy sales research and insight into Trigger Events)
• Integrate with marketing for lead nurturing (to build sales pipeline)
• Create a single view of customers and prospects (to be informed)
• Embed methodology and process coaching (qualify, call plan, close plan, etc.)
• Simplify reports and KPIs which can actually be managed (activities)
• Support customer lifecycle post sale (cases, complaints, renewals, etc.)

With accurate data in a CRM the next issue to decide is what metrics provide meaningful reporting. A common mistake made by management at all levels is to seek to manage by results. Jason Jordan writes insightfully on this topic in his book, Cracking The Sales Management Code, highlighting that only 17% of the 300+ possible sales metrics measured are actually manageable. As an example, you cannot manage revenue, but you can manage the activities that create it. Rather than command sales people to bring in more revenue, they need to be guided in which activities are most likely to create the type of revenue you are seeking. Managing activities is the key to delivering the right results and this leads us to the catalyst that brings methodology, process and platform technology together for successful sales enablement – the sales manager.

Sales management is without doubt the most important link in the revenue chain for any organization. The right sales manager creates emotional commitment and belief within their team, they coach and mentor for sales success, they develop the right strategies to focus effort where the team can competitively win and they drive the right conversations with the right roles within the right targeted prospects. They also create organizational alignment with upstream marketing and downstream delivery, support and service to build a business with quality customers.

Sales management leadership is the catalyst that brings it all together: people, process and technology within the right strategy and a culture of excellence in execution. The type of person capable of delivering all this is an engineer rather than a warrior, they have empathy yet hold people to account. But the best sales manager in the world cannot be successful if their boss has them endlessly in internal meetings and reporting up. The sales manager needs to be a coach rather than an administrator. She needs to spend more time in the field than in the office, and more time strategizing and reviewing opportunities with sales people than managing reports. A great coach does not jump in and take over, nor do they do the sales person’s job for them. They don’t feel the need to rescue people and instead understand that people are best motivated by reasons they themselves discover. They focus on planning and debriefing to create constant improvement.

The Holy Grail of sales enablement is the seamless integration of the right methodology, efficient sales process, all enabled by Social Selling and CRM technology used to coach sales people by an effective sales leader focused on strategy, execution and building a positive team culture.

The very best sales operations bring people, process and technology together to be obsessively customer-centric.

The post Sales Mastery or Sales Enablement? appeared first on Head Of Sales.

The best salespeople make it seem like an art form. Today, more than ever, it’s an art that flourishes with a disciplined approach, when backed by science and engaged with by a team empowered by the best digital and cultural tools.

Great works include a comprehensive CRM, a refined sales funnel, aligned departments, diverse teams, great culture and a strategic approach to AI-powered tools. And the artist’s handbook? Our new ebook of 50 pro sales tips from the best in the business across Australia and New Zealand.

Death of a salesman? Not so fast.

Customers can now buy whatever they want, whenever they want, from whatever device they prefer. What’s more, thanks to the internet, they can do their own research into a product or service or just check social media to see what’s being said.

Many feared the internet would see the end of the need for salespeople. What could they possibly say or do if customers were already as informed as them?

Instead, successful sales teams have discovered that rather than being shut down by the digital revolution, it’s given them a million new colours to paint with.

For example, AI-powered tools allow sales reps to offload time-consuming, manual tasks and focus on what they’re really good at – being trusted, insightful advisors to their customers. AI is transforming the way sales teams identify, nurture and convert leads and is bringing predictive power to play so that sales reps can anticipate customer needs.

And Cloud-based CRM is now a priority for high performing businesses who want the power to make sales anytime, any place with up-to-date data that is fully integrated into their other platforms.

Are you ready for the sales renaissance?

The digital revolution has driven a renaissance in the way sales are conducted. There’s never been a more exciting time to be building sales strategies and developing the teams to execute them.

The 50 Pro Sales Tips for 2020 ebook brings together unmissable insights from the best in their fields to give you a head start on the new decade’s challenges and opportunities. Balancing guidance on how to get the most out of new technologies with advice on how to nurture high-performance mindsets and successful cultures, the eBook gives you the tools you need to become a master of the art of sales in 2020.

Here’s a preview of what you can look forward to.

Five insights from the ebook

Tip #04 on building a great sales culture

In this one, CXC’s Corporate Solutions Director, Paul Chiswick, says their high performing sales team are involved every step of the way in developing and optimising client solutions. Rather than separating the sales team from that process, they’ve become integral to creating the customised models and tailored solutions they know their client needs. Expanding your picture of what your sales team is capable of might be the best move you make in 2020.

Tip #13 on lead prioritisation and growth

Sally Fallow, General Manager at Para Mobility, encourages you to match the passion of your sales team with the insight of your data. All the data in the world is no good if it can’t support the particular needs of each client. Using AI-powered tools to strategically mine your data is just one way data can boost sales revenue. Think lead prioritisation, forecasting and personalisation.

Tip #27 on social selling

Daniel Jurczyszyn, National Sales Director at Destined, cautions businesses to be authentic, or else. Customers won’t stand for inconsistency or perceived hypocrisy from a brand. By showing you believe in your brand and owning mistakes when they happen, you’ll be rewarded with customer loyalty online and off.

Tip #37 on negotiation

If you want to connect with your audience then you need to have empathy, says Kathy Rhodes, Chief Alchemist at the Thought Alchemist. Instead of communicating your value and making it about your brand, understand what your audience needs to hear and communicate that. A great sales pitch is one that offers understanding and solutions.

Tip #47 on building customer relationships

Phil Cleary, Senior Director of Sales Enablement here at Salesforce reminds us that we must know our customer better than they know themselves. Just when you think you’ve got all your personas down pat, drill deeper. With AI-powered tools, sales teams can further refine the customer journey and access personas they didn’t know existed. Step into your customers’ shoes: it’s one piece of sales advice that’s never gone out of fashion.

And what’s my sales tip for 2020? Find out by downloading your copy of the 50 Pro Sales Tips ebook and make 2020 your best sales year yet.

The post Introducing the 50 Pro Sales Tips for 2020 eBook appeared first on Head Of Sales.

There has been an insidious trend in professional selling.

It is a misinterpretation of the term ‘social selling’ where people cruise along doing non-selling tasks sprinkled with researching, emailing and grooming their social platforms… all while treating the phone like it’s covered with spiders.

The only thing that works in new business development, whether for inside sales or in the field, is the right combinations of effective activity… and lots of it!

Any sales floor that sounds like people are snoozing is in trouble. I was talking with someone last week who told me that all sales people had to book a ‘booth’ to make prospecting calls so that they do not disturb others on the sales floor! You’ve gotta be kidding me… “bring back the buzz!” So many businesses and sales people have confused ‘social selling’ with ‘social marketing’. Social platforms certainly play an essential role for research and creating a strong personal brand that sets and agenda and evidences insight and credibility. But selling is all about engaging the buyer in a meaningful two-way conversation and the human voice is like nothing else for achieving just that. If ‘outbound’ activities do not culminate in lots of phone calls then the methodology for creating sales pipeline is just a recipe for failure.

Every sales person must personally ‘own’ and masterfully execute these 3 things if they are to succeed in high-value, or any form of business-to-business, selling:

1. The Right Narrative

2. The Right Combinations

3. The Right Mindset

The first BIG prerequisite for elevating the way we sell is to create the right ‘value narrative’. Instead of leading with who we are and what we do, we should instead lead with why a conversation should matter to the other person. We need to hook interest with the worthwhile business or personal outcomes that we can help them achieve.

The call you make should have been preceded by social marketing activities in the days or weeks prior where you’ get yourself into the orbit’ of you prospects without any hard-sell. Then first thing in the morning, before the others snoozers arrive at the office, you’re hammering away with your COMBO outreach strategy:

• Phone their cell/mobile and if you don’t get a live voice on the other end …
• Leave a voicemail. Confident, to the point and without mentioning your products or solutions… just the value for them in having a conversation.
• Then immediately send a LinkedIn InMail or connection request (with context, not ‘cold’)
• Then send them an email.

Two to three minutes per contact maximum on your pre-prepared list. Ideally, you’re working from your CRM or ‘dialing software’ but a sheet of paper will do the trick. Never blame technology for your failure to drive the necessary level of intelligent activity required to achieve the success you need. Here is a step-by-step guide on using these advanced techniques leveraging the power of Sales Navigator.

Join the phoning revolution where ‘social selling’ goes back to the future to save businesses from revenue atrophy!

Next, we need the right mindset… just like Arnie who is very smart but also has always been highly driven, inquisitive, disciplined and ambitious. We need a minimum of two hours every single day doing outbound prospecting where we seek conversations and meetings with potential clients. We MUST do this regardless of how ‘successful’ we are with current revenue and no matter how busy we become with existing clients. Before you go home each day, make sure you have your list of 30-50 calls to make first thing in the morning.

I cannot tell you how many salespeople I meet who just won’t accept responsibility for the creation of their own pipeline. Treat leads from your website, channel, marketing or inside sales team as a bonus. You’ve gotta own your own success, fight for it, work for it, change inside to be worthy of it. Be your own SDR and time-block 2 hours EVERY day for proactive outbound prospecting where you focus on the phone. Use social media and LinkedIn to support your sales strategy but don’t use it to hide like a coward from the phone.

Click here to download keynote slides

The video interview below discusses where ‘social selling’ has gone wrong. Can you believe that one company is cited for removing phones from the sales area altogether! Wow…complete lunacy in my view. On the other hand, no-one should be doing pure cold calls because ‘warming a call-up’ is an incredibly easy thing to do today with fast pragmatic research tools such as LinkedIn or using your CRM properly.

Build your personal brand in non-selling time.

Yes, you need a strong personal brand because 75% of people research us online before deciding to engage or buy. Get it done in your own time at night and here are some tips. Have a professionally friendly photo with a headline that is your ‘promise of value’ to the customers you serve. Show you personal values and also what you deliver in terms of business outcomes in your Summary. Tailor your URL and include your contact details… you’re in sales so forget privacy and instead make it easy for people to reach you!

Should you be publishing content? Yes, but not during selling time. If you can’t write, just focus on sharing content that your clients will value. Create a free Buffer account or use your company’s Hootsuite, Hubspot or other content curation software. Publish content that gets on the front foot to head objections off at the pass. If prospects say they’re too busy to meet you, write a post about how 20 minutes with you saves 10 hours and reduces risk… writing it will be the best sales training you’ve ever had.

The ‘Neptune’ release of LinkedIn is designed to dial-down your narcissism and ramp-up your sales effectiveness. Boolean search is gone in free or Premium… time to buy Sales Navigator on your own credit card if the boss won’t buy it for you.

Stop treating LinkedIn as a vanity tool. It’s a valueable marketing and sales resource!

Beyond the big three of 1) an insightful value narrative that is relevant to the buyer, 2) the right effective combinations of activities, and 3) the right mindset where you absolutely take personal responsibility for build three times your target in qualified pipeline… you need these things to be successful in sales:

1. Intrinsic value and ‘market fit’ in the product, service or solution you offer
2. Passionate belief in the value you offer and the people you work with
3. High EQ for people skills and above average levels of intelligence
4. Genuine curiosity and desire to learn (about your customers and about how to be successful). Stop telling people about your company and products and start talking about your customer’s problems and opportunities, and the business results you passionately believe you can deliver for them.
5. Courage and discipline the size of mountains to get out of your comfort zone and do what is necessary… forget merely doing your best
6. A phone. This is the most powerful of all social selling tools
7. A LinkedIn Sales Navigator account. Like the phone, it’s a basic tool of trade and you’ve can’t survive without it.
8. A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system integrated with marketing automation and lead nurturing
9. A boss who will believe in you and hold you to account.

Is everything on this list essential? Is there anything on this list you could actually live without in your professional life and still be successful? Or is there something you think I should add?

The post The Rise Of The Silent Sales Floor​ Is Killing Business appeared first on Head Of Sales.