Unfortunately, they still mean different things to different people. And they have been misused for too long.

“The greatest inhibitor to sales effectiveness is the seller’s inability to communicate a VALUE message.” — SiriusDecisions

To me, a value proposition is a means to communicate succinctly to a Prospect or to a Buyer what’s in it for them when they deal with us.

A value proposition is a means to communicate succinctly to a Prospect or to a Buyer what’s in it for them when they deal with us.

It should be that simple, but organizations have tied themselves into knots coming up with ones that work for them.

What’s worse, too many organizations are still inward-looking and product-focused when they should be customer-centric, i.e. they should “do everything with the customer in mind”, as Jeff Bezos put it for his company Amazon.

So, to me (and to Jeff, I guess) the only value proposition that counts is the one that engages your customers.

The only value proposition that counts is the one that engages your customer.

Why is that important?

Because if you get it wrong it can have horrible consequences for your business. One of my pet grievances is when marketers put up a value proposition that is completely focused on the wrong thing: on their organization.

Not only does it wreak havoc with how prospects view your website, but your sales people will start using it in their prospecting and customer interactions, too.

Here are some actual real-life examples of what I am talking about:

This is a cold email that landed in my in-tray and didn’t get caught by the spam filter

“Dear Peter,

Greetings from (name withheld)! I am reaching out to introduce (name withheld). We are a cross channel ad management and optimization platform. Our advanced algorithmic solutions automate & optimize your digital marketing process to give you a better ROAS. We have deep integration into various digital channels and analytics into a unified dash board. This equips you to easily manage and optimise all your social marketing campaigns. Attached is an introductory deck which showcases our product features. I would love to get on a quick 10-minute introductory call to discuss how our automation platform can add value to your digital marketing efforts. 

How does anytime this week look for you? Let me know when I can set up the call.

Best,

(name withheld), Product Manager”

Did you notice how many sentences above start with “Our”, with “I” or with “We”? What is this email about? Is it about the company and its products, or is it about what they can do for their customers?

So, I say that any value proposition that begins with “I” or “We” leads you down the wrong path because it leads yo to talking about yourself, not what’s in it for your customers.

Here is an example from the ABOUT US page of a vendor website:

“(name withheld) is a fully managed IT services company that focuses its time and energy on developing, maintaining, and supporting technology systems for growing businesses, implementing ERP systems and custom application development. 

(name withheld) has distinguished themselves by working for and with leading companies and service organizations acquiring vast experience with, and on, a wide range of complex, mission-critical and high-volume information systems platforms and roll outs for high profile organizations.”

How customer-centric is this information? What value does it convey?

So, have a look at your own business. On your company website does the ABOUT US page talk about you, or about what you do for your customers?

Check how your sales reps and SDRs: How do they introduce your organization every day?

Does your ABOUT US web page talk about you? How do your sales reps and SDRs introduce your organization?

Sales executives that I deal with tell me that prospects now decide in the first few seconds of a cold call whether they are interested, or not. Once they have lost interest it is VERY difficult to get their interest back. So we only have a few seconds to make a positive impression and to capture the imagination of our prospects.

We have to make our value proposition immediately engage our customers and prospects.

We have to make our value proposition immediately engage our Customers and our Prospects.

So, how customer-focused in your value proposition? How do you get yours right?

It’s easy: just consider everything you do from your customers’ perspective and convey clearly what’s in it for them.

The post How Customer-Centric Is Your Value Proposition? appeared first on Head Of Sales.

It’s funny then that, according to research by Lee Resource and IBM, 80% of companies surveyed claimed that they offer superior customer service, but only 8% of their customers agreed with them. Ouch!

80% of companies surveyed claimed that they offer superior customer service, but only 8% of their customers agreed with them. Ouch!

It is undisputed that negative customer experiences cost your bottom line. Have a look at these CX statistics:

For every customer complaint, there are 26 other customers who have remained silent. (source: Lee Resource Inc)

A dissatisfied consumer will tell between 9 and 15 people about their experience, while about 13% of dissatisfied customers tell more than 20 people. (source: Lee Resource Inc)

Attracting a new customer costs 5-times as much as keeping an existing one. (source: White House Office of Consumer Affairs, Washington, DC)

Happy customers who get their issue resolved tell about 4 to 6 people about their positive experience. (source: White House Office of Consumer Affairs, Washington, DC)

86% of consumers quit doing business with a company because of a bad customer experience. (source: Harris Interactive, Customer Experience Impact Report)

It’s no wonder then that customer-centricity and customer experience (CX) are hot topics in business right now. But just saying so is not enough. What about your business? Just how customer-centric is it?

Just how Customer-Centric is Your Business?

Before I go on I’d like to clear up a question I get asked a lot: What is the difference between customer-centricity and customer experience?

It’s simple, really.

Customer-Centricity creates positive Customer Experiences. In other words, for customers to perceive a business as being customer-focused it needs to be structured and managed like Jeff Bezos says, i.e. with the customer in mind. So, to be customer-centric, at every touch point in the organization you need to ask: “What does that look like from the customer’s point of view?” and then adjust your processes, KPIs and culture to do the right thing to create that positive customer experience.

So, how Customer-Centric is Your Business?

I propose that there are 10 Critical Customer Touch Points in the customer’s buying journey that can make or break your business.

These ten Touch Points are:

1. A Brand that Differentiates Your Business

I don’t mean that you have to be a household name or that your logo needs to be a certain color. The main thing is that you have a distinct brand that customers can recognize and identify you by. Most businesses should have this under control.

2. A well-defined Product and/or Service to Sell

How well can you articulate your product or service? How clearly can you explain to your prospects and customers the benefits of your product or service? Will your customers understand what it does for them, i.e. what’s in it for them? Or do you mostly talk about how it works?

3. A Unique Selling Proposition (USP) And A Killer Introduction That Engages Your Ideal Buyers And Makes Them Want To Know More About You

This is critical: It can’t be a motherhood statement such as “We really care for our customers.” It needs to be credible and you need to be able to back it up. What is your unique value proposition? I.e. can you clearly state what makes your business and its offerings unique and why a prospect should be interested in you? What makes you different from any other business out there?

And then, how do you convey that difference at the first point of contact with a new prospect? How can you intrigue and engage them right from your opening introduction? How do you get them to lean forward and say: “Tell me more.”?

4. A Clear Understanding Of Who Your Ideal Customers And Prospects Are

You would agree with me that there is little point in engaging with the wrong kind of prospects. You are better off dealing with the right kind instead, right? So, how clear are you on what your ideal customers look like?

5. The knowledge Of Where To Find Them

Once you know who your ideal Buyers are you need to know where they hang out. Do you know where to find your ideal prospects and customers?

6. The Understanding To Access And Engage Them Effectively

It’s not enough to know where to find your ideal Buyers. You need to know how to get to them and get them interested in your goods or services. How effective and scalable is your sales process? How well does it leverage your unique value proposition (see Point 3 above)?

7. The Know-How To Eliminate Your Competitors

Rarely will you be the only one in the race to a deal. Instead, you will most likely have to beat off any number of competitors. So, how do you fend them off and becomes your Buyer’s final and only choice?

8. The Skills To Create Effective Sales Proposals That Close Deals

In most B2B sales situations you are likely to be asked to submit a sales proposal to your Buyer. Do you get excited by the fact that the Buyer asked for a proposal and send it off to them asap? Or is there a better, smarter way? Further, how can you ensure that a) your proposal covers exactly what the Buyer needs, and b) that you have maximized your chances of your proposal being the last one standing, the one that gets accepted?

9. A Superior Pre, During and Post-Purchase Customer Experience

If you reflect on the customer experience statistics at the beginning of this article you will understand just how mission-critical your customers’ perceptions and experiences are to the success of your business at every step of the way. So, how successfully are you managing your Buyer’s interactions with your business?

10. The Ability To Keep Your Customers Loyal And To Win Their Repeat Business

Your customers’ experience does not end with a transaction. In fact, their post-sale experience is so critical that it will determine whether they will choose to come to do more business with you, or not. So, how do your prospects and customers perceive their interactions with your business at every touch point? Is their experience a pleasant one that will make them rave to their friends and colleagues about your business, or is it one that will more likely make them warn people off you?

There you have it. The 10 critical customer touch points that make or break your business.

The post 10 Touch Points That Make Or Break Sales appeared first on Head Of Sales.

Many sales organizations these days are struggling to achieve organic sales revenue and profit growth.

According to the TAS Group, 67 per cent of salespeople do not achieve their sales targets.

Thanks to the internet, buyers now have more information available to them than ever before. This easy access to knowledge is putting sales reps into a weak position, as it empowers buyers to take charge of the sales process. Buyers now carry out extensive online research before feel ready to contact a vendor. Thus, now the Buyers decide WHICH VENDOR they will contact, and WHEN they will do so. If your organization is not among the chosen ones your reps may never know that the buyer even existed. Yes, we are in the era of the buyers journey.

Now the Buyers decide WHICH VENDOR they will contact, and WHEN they will do so. If your organization is not among the chosen ones your reps may never know that the Buyer even existed.

As illustrated below, there are three distinct windows of opportunity in the buyers journey to influence the buyer towards our brand and our goods/services:

1. Opportunity To Create Desire

In the early stage of their buyers journey sellers have the opportunity to create desire in the buyers’ mind to consider our offerings, whether it be a new car, a new pair of shoes, or a complex IT system.

2. Opportunity To Influence The Buyer

Later, we have the opportunity to influence their decision-making and lure them away from competitors and towards our brand and offerings.

3. Too Late To Influence The Buyer

But, unfortunately, once they have made up their mind about what they want to buy and which vendor they want to buy it from, there is little opportunity left for vendors to change the buyers’ mind. They simply have come too far down the track towards making their buying decision to change tack now. Unless, that is, you have a very compelling argument or information that they had not considered (see the section on Challenger / Disruptive / Provocative Selling below).

Obviously, waiting to be contacted by a buyer is not a great sales strategy. We need something more pro-active, and we need to focus on the first two windows of opportunity that I mentioned above.

Obviously, waiting to be contacted by a Buyer is not a great sales strategy.

Over time, several options have become available to restock the sales and marketing arsenal that has been depleted by the buying journey and by the modern buyers. They can be used in any combination to help you reach your sales targets. Here are some of the more commonly used ones:

1. Cold Calling / Warm Calling
2. Content Marketing
3. Social Selling
4. Storytelling
5. Account Based Marketing (ABM)
6. Challenger / Disruptive / Provocative Selling

Let’s now look at the above options in more detail:

1. Cold Calling / Warm Calling

A lot of articles have been written about the pros and cons of cold calling. Tony J. Hughes, has written extensively on the subject, largely promoting cold calling as an effective sales technique. Personally, I am not a huge fan of calling somebody out of the blue, interrupting whatever they are doing and expecting them to drop everything to listen to your sales pitch. The only time this has half a chance of working is if you really have something significant up your sleeve that is of vital importance to them and to their business. If you have something like this then please feel free to go straight on to the section below on Challenger / Disruptive / Provocative Selling.

Otherwise, my recommendation is to stay away from cold calling. Instead, warm up your prospect with Content Marketing or Social Selling (both described below) before making direct contact. In this way, at least they know who you are and that you have something that is worthy of their time, or not.

2. Content Marketing

This strategy requires marketing to issue content that entices and compels buyers to our business. This content is usually published to the website and online generally, and complementary material is issued to the sales team. Content may comprise white papers, thought leadership articles, client success stories and lead generation campaigns. The key to success is that marketing continuously monitors the performance of its content and actively seeks feedback from the sales team about how prospects and customers react to it. Equally, sales reps must actively provide their front line intelligence to marketing so that the performance of marketing content can continuously be improved.

Success depends largely on a highly collaborative feedback loop between sales at the customer-facing front and marketing at the online front.

3. Social Selling

This is a specialist version of content marketing which is practiced by individual sales reps. The idea is that we want to attract buyers not only to our brand but also to individual reps who have built a reputation of being subject matter experts.

The way it works in many organisations is that marketing provides the right content to the sales force for them to promote their personal subject matter expertise on social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter. In other words, individual sales reps attract the buyer through their personal brand, as well as their employer’s brand.

Again, the success of this initiative largely depends on close collaboration between marketing and sales, if the content is to match the individual, and vice versa.

4. Storytelling

Storytelling is very powerful. Ever since humans were living in caves we sat around the campfire and told stories. Before the written word was invented stories were the way that we acquired information and learned new skills, such as how to hunt, gather and grow food. Even today, us humans remember stories much better than mere facts or figures.

When salespeople engage with a prospect or client they will have much deeper impact when they convey their information through a story. Storytelling also has the advantage that it doesn’t feel like selling. Just telling a story or an anecdote feels less intrusive to both the buyer and the rep. So, go ahead and tell the story of how a past client found themselves in a similar situation to your current prospect and how your solution helped them to overcome their challenges and to succeed.

Your marketing team should arm your sales force with stories to regale your prospects and customers.

5. Account Based Marketing (ABM)

ABM is nothing new, but modern sales and marketing technology has elevated it to the latest “must-have”. The reason is that it can be very powerful, if executed well. Imagine you want to win a new key account or retain a major client that is at risk of moving on to a competitor. Wouldn’t you want to give them the attention they need to help secure or retain their business ? So, you create a specialist team, let’s call them a “hit squad”, to identify the key stakeholders in your account, i.e. the decision makers, influencers and gate keepers, and you identify what makes each of them tick, their likes and dislikes, challenges and opportunities. Then you provide each of them individually, through whatever means necessary, with the information that they need to make an informed decision on why they should buy from your organization. This is so that when they all meet to decide which vendor to go with, they will discover that they all miraculously agree that they should go with your business.

This “hit squad” must consist of a multi-disciplinary team, comprised of marketing, sales, product management and communications experts. So, once again, close collaboration between marketing and sales is the key to success here, too.

6. Challenger / Disruptive / Provocative Selling

I have previously written about this type of selling and why it is not suitable for every rep. However, if your sales force has people with the stature to challenge your prospects’ or clients’ thinking then it can be very effective. The idea is that you disrupt their thinking with some new information that they either did not previously possess, or that they had not yet considered. Something that stops them in their tracks. The neat thing is that, because this particular insight was brought to them by you and only you, it gives you instant credibility over and above your competitors and turns you into a trusted adviser. It should be easy from there on to close the deal.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are a myriad of options to engage your prospects and clients, but waiting to be contacted by a Buyer is not a great sales strategy. And, given the myriad of alternatives, there is also no need for cold calling.

Regardless of which of the above sales techniques you choose to go with, much of your sales performance and success will depend on how well your marketing and sales teams work together to engage the Buyer and to differentiate your business from that of your competitors.

Ideally, your teams will collaborate across the entire 360 degrees, as illustrated here.

You are invited to talk to us about your business challenges and we’ll do our best to help, if we can. Go ahead, what have you got to lose ?

The post Six Sales Prospecting Methods, Including Cold Calling. appeared first on Head Of Sales.

Less than ten seconds is all the time executives now take before they decide whether a sales rep is worth spending their time with, or not.

Seasoned salespeople tell me that, ten years ago, they used to have 30 minutes, or even longer, to establish rapport with a new Prospect or Buyer. During the 2010s, this time shrank down to just a few minutes. The latest feedback is that this window of opportunity has now shrunk even further and is now down to less than ten seconds.

That’s all the time executives now take before they decide whether a new sales rep is worth spending their time with, or not. This anecdotal evidence is also backed up by research. In fact, the hardest part of the sales cycle now is no longer to close a deal, but to gain traction and engagement with a Prospect in the first place. Or, put another way: While it is easy to reach out to your ideal customers, it is now VERY difficult to draw them into a meaningful sales conversation.”

Further, Sirius Decisions tells us: “The greatest inhibitor to sales effectiveness is the seller’s inability to communicate a VALUE message.”

Add to this Forrester’s research findings, saying that “85 percent of sales interactions fail to meet the expectations of buyers” and you can see how the old linear method of introducing ourselves and our business first, before moving on to our products, services or solutions and related customer pain points, is well and truly passé.

Possessing an effective and professional business introduction that spells out clearly and succinctly the benefits that we bring to our buyers is now more essential than ever. If those benefits are also quantified then that’s even better.

So, why do many businesses and their salespeople turn off their prospects, right from the first contact?

Let me give you a concrete example:

The other day, I was asked by a senior executive in an international technology company to facilitate an introduction to a CMO whom I know personally.

I was happy to make the introduction and asked the executive to send me just a short paragraph with a synopsis on their business for me to make the introduction with. Let’s call them xyz IT Company to protect their true identity.

Here is an anonymized version of what I then received:

“xyz IT Company is a US-based technology company founded in 2013, we provide a cloud-based application, designed for enterprise businesses who are committed to B2B and B2C sales transformation, and interested in automating the preparation of bespoke presentations to increase productivity and drive revenue growth, along with reporting and analytics to surface the most effective presentations. 

xyz IT Company integrates deeply with CRM’s, BI tools and any data sources to fuse company data and approved content, delivering a high quality, interactive experience. These automatically generated presentations save a sales (or account management) teams significant preparation time; meaning they can spend longer with their customers and prospects doing what they do best: selling. The presentations themselves are developed as web pages at a slide level, so there’s unlimited flexibility in how content is designed and the way data is visualized.

 xyz IT Company currently works with organizations across a range of industry verticals and company sizes, clients such as (customer brands removed) and we’re also in the process of launching pilots with companies such as (brand names withheld).”

Did you understand it? Did you read even past the first paragraph?

I know the company well, but even I couldn’t make sense of their introduction. Now imagine what the poor CMO (whom I was meant to introduce) would have thought both of XYZ Company and of me, as the referrer.

I get it that it is human nature to want to talk about ourselves and our business and how important and great we and our products or services are.

For a quick exercise go to your website and take a good look at the ABOUT US page.

For a quick exercise go to your business website and take a good look at your ABOUT US page. If that web page is really all about you then get it changed. Get it changed to ABOUT WHAT WE DO FOR YOU. Only then will it be more likely to engage buyers.

Let’s see how it looks from the other side.

Just put yourself into your prospects’, clients’ and customers’ shoes and imagine this:

If I were in their position, would I want to hear all about you and your company, how long you have been around, how many employees you have, in how many countries you operate, what products you have and the logos of your customers?

Or, would I first and foremost want to hear what’s in it for me (WIIFM)?

I like to break the process of starting a new business conversation down into three parts:

1. Answering WIIFM
2. Answering HOW we do it
3. Answering where we have done it before

Let me elaborate:

1. Answering WIIFM

If we spell out the exact business benefits in qualitative and quantitative terms then a buyer can decide very quickly whether they are interested in finding out more, or not. After, all for a sales rep it is just as important to qualify a prospects OUT, as it is to qualify them IN. It saves a rep a lot of time NOT to pursue a prospect who is not interested.

2. Answering HOW we do it

Once we have established active interest in our buyer’s mind they will want more information. Information such as how we deliver the benefits, what they need to do from their end to be successful and how our product, service or solution may apply to their business.

3. Answering WHERE we have done it before

So, they know what’s in it for them and how we deliver the outcome. Now, our buyer will want to be assured that this result can also be delivered to their business and that they are not a lab rat or Guinea pig. They want proof that what we can deliver what we promise. So at this 3rd stage they want customer success stories and testimonials.

All the above, however, depends on gaining that buyer’s interest in the first six seconds. So, how is your business introduction doing?

The post I Have 10 Seconds To Make An Impression? appeared first on Head Of Sales.

What tactics for leveraging LinkedIn Sales Navigator do you need to know?

Blended prospecting techniques are nothing new but codification of these combinations in the context of the Sales Navigator platform is required.

Step 1: Take an account list of no greater than 50 accounts and add them on Sales Navigator.

Step 2: Save 5-7 prospects per account as leads in every account because you are going to monitor the content they share and where they are mentioned + interact with it.

Step 3: Build a robust Sales Navigator feed you’ll utilize in both web and mobile STREAM. It’s a custom feed.

Step 4: Here’s the kicker, sort by Lead Shares and start to comment on what they’re sharing in a thoughtful way. Remember you aren’t connected to these people so it’s wow factor for CXOs to have some total stranger commenting in a relevant way out of the clear blue! Contacts that share based on the 90, 9 and 1 internet theory of prosumption are massively valuable. Basically, only 1% write, 9% share, and the other 90% are really more voyeurs on the web (Wikipedia power law distribution). If someone is sharing, YOU MUST CALL THEM. So use a service like Lusha, Data.com, ZoomInfo, DiscoverOrg or RainKing to directly call them and comment on what they shared in Social to their LinkedIn feed as evidenced by Navigator.

Step 5: You need to set aside time to mine your common connection or “TeamLinks” per account. Your goal is to call common connections or colleagues that are connected into prospect companies. All common connections should be exploited. If you sell software to CMOs, still leverage a Teamlink to the HR department or Legal. All TeamLinks are golden. Navigator “Teamlinks,” for those just tuning in is the most powerful feature of advanced LinkedIn. In essence, it lets you see who in your own company is connected to anyone in the prospect organization.

Step 6: Set aside time to explore all your 1st and 2nd-degree referral sources into prospect bases. These are represented in the middle column on Navigator. I would click underneath the pane to expand and start to look for patterns that emerge in the common connections. Here it will reveal competitive salespeople in other vendor companies or nodes on the network. Nodes are thought leaders in your industry so omnipresent, that their mere connection to your prospects, is heat seeking to indicate they’re the right decision maker. Call up sellers in affiliated vendors that are harmonious to what you sell and co-host networking events with them to overlap your networks. The cardinal rule of referral selling on LinkedIn is NOT to do it digitally. When you identify the connection in common, call that connection point and offer to ghostwrite a message they can pass along to make the warm introduction. MAKE IT FRICTIONLESS.

B2B buyers are 5x more likely to engage when the outreach is through a mutual connection. – LinkedIn Research

Step 7: Watch the daily email digest from Navigator that hits your smartphone email inbox for job changes. When you are going after a calling list, start to call down the Navigator Newsfeed referencing the lead news mentions, job changes, lead recommendations and other triggers like funding, or innovation projects. Use the live Navigator real-time feed as the bedrock for your TRIPLES. You’ll remember the basis of COMBO selling is a call, email and vmail (video or voicemail) back to back to back, preferably under 2 minutes. Jab jab, hook!

Step 8: Don’t exceed 50 target accounts and up to 7 contacts per. This means you should only ever be monitoring 300 objects which is double the Dunbar number of 150. The neocortex can only hold 150 connections. LinkedIn Sales Navigator actually gets unwieldy and you start to miss information if you follow too many people or accounts. Even if you change your STREAM sorting to “recent” versus “most important,” it’s cumbersome. 50 Key Target Accounts per quarter max, 5-7 leads per prospect, at least 1 C-Level per account. Remember you can easily purge out accounts and leads if you track too many. Work clean, keep it organized and tight.

A hodgepodge of Tricks and Tips:

• Nobody ever calls Presidents, CEOs or Board Members. You should call VCs who back the companies if going after earlier stage ventures. Where do you get the phone number? Many times, by just linking in (try to write a customized LinkedIn request), they’re phone number will already be freely shared on profile in the Contact area.
• Exhaust all of your InMails every month no matter what, even a disinterested response gives you a credit back which yields over 30 in total. Huge secret: You can hit reply to any InMail an unlimited amount of times. So that 30 becomes 60 and 90 very fast. Quality InMail follow-up is key.
• I talk to CXOs, they get 1 InMail in every 100 emails. They get 1 phone call / VM in 500-1,000 emails. STOP, REREAD THAT! What does this tell you? It’s not even the quality of a cold call, voicemail or InMail: IT’S DOING IT AT ALL that makes the lion share difference. This 10X action alone completely stands out in the all digital social selling cacophony. Pretty much everyone I add now (and I’ve tested this) immediately spams me back selling products or services. Social selling fail! No value is being added. The vast majority of all sellers are lazily ONLY emailing and adding without a custom invite, only to immediately spam back (once.) No follow up. The golden secret of all sales Cardone will tell you is: F/UP, F/UP, F/UP!

The relevancy paradox is the idea that adding value and changing up the message every time will yield a better result than never varying. It looks needy. Over-researching can cripple an outreach campaign. Don’t overthink it with analysis paralysis, set the appointment.

But for this to work, you’ve gotta have a relevant target that’s as similar as possible to existing prospects or leverages a direct competitor’s solution. They’ve bought before, they get it. Some percentage will be dissatisfied and buy again. Be there when the buying phase begins. Educate in the education phase but move fast and identify prospects who have entered ‘buying phase.’

• Work anniversaries and birthdays are pretty spammy. Congratulating people incessantly on a new role, funding or a school in common is wildly overplayed. The best messaging is that you provide X value (quantified is best aka hard dollars) for Y similar company. It’s really that simple, cut and dried. The Cialdini concept of social proof is the most powerful. If you talk to the CMO of Pepsi about something you’re doing for Coke, you’re getting a callback. It’s fiercely competitive to innovate at the top.
• I’ve tested every type of messaging under the sun. Repetition is the key. Sending a very similar message from the top of the food chain down the ranks and then only slightly varying it, even not at all as you TRIPLE every 72 hours will get your emails circulated. Some call this the art of confusion. You are shaking the trees and low hanging fruit will fall off. Mike Scher had some wild research results looking at 1.4 million calls that I’m paraphrasing here. Check out his work at FrontLine Selling!

Jeb Blount is one of my personal heroes and his book completely changed my life and career. And that’s even after 30 years selling in the field and running entire technology companies for Australia New Zealand. He also stirred the pot tremendously with the below quote which spawned 1,300 likes and 180,000 views on a LinkedIn update I published as at this writing!

“I closed a $2.5 Million deal after leaving the exact same voice mail for a C-Level Exec every morning for 52 consecutive days. He finally called me back and said, ‘You’re not going to stop are you?’ I responded, ‘not until you meet with me.’ The meeting opened a dialogue that, six months later, resulted in my company replacing his incumbent vendor. Persistence is the fuel of winners.” – Jeb Blount

Do you agree? Litigious roaches scurried out of the woodwork and hissed. Bottom line: Drop everything and buy this book: Fanatical Prospecting.

• There’s a higher propensity for folks active in Social to be open to a TRIPLE and convert because of one. Navigator is a great way to help you prioritize your book of business based on Trigger Events – who’s alive and kicking. What’s the number 1 trigger event? Job changes. Thank you Craig Elias and Tibor Shanto (authors of Shift!). In the first 90 days, the average CXO will deploy 1M dollars in OpEx capital for new business expenditures to shake up the status quo and make their mark. There’s a new Sherrif in town!
• I’d be remiss not to mention the mid-funnel practice of MULTI-Threading. Remember there are 6.8 stakeholders in every buying committee now in a complex sale according to CEB, so if you’re single-threaded you’re “deaded!” Ok, it rhymes. But take the time mid-stream, once you’ve opened the oppt, to get connectivity with your contact’s boss, lateral VPs and Operational folks (the victims of the problem), aka the Users of the solution – is priceless to mobilize consensus. This is going to increase close rates and accelerate deals. You should be adding everyone you ever meet, shake hands with at a networking event, etc. Start to harvest as many accurate email addresses, cell phone numbers and build your LinkedIn profile to 5,000 ASAP (much higher likelihood of hitting quota!)

What strategies for advanced Sales Navigator did I miss? How do you utilize LinkedIn Sales Navigator in combinatorial ways with other prospecting channels to land meetings with impossible to reach prospects, accelerate your deals, and exceed quota? Very curious…

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A lot of prospecting advice given out to sellers is around building out a strong pipeline to make sure that when a deal fails, regardless of how far through you pipeline it is, there will be others to replace it. I agree multiple high-quality deals in your pipeline can be the answer. However, what I often also see is too many deals in pipelines which are overloaded and risk becoming stale. The common focus on having 3 – 5 times pipeline volume as a metric often drives the wrong activity. (As managers, we need to be careful what we inspect/ expect).

If we compare a reps available prospecting time versus the activity levels required to advance those deals, most sellers in this situation have too many deals in their pipeline versus the amount of time they have to develop those deals. This means that many deals are never developed and become wasted opportunities.

Prospecting versus Nurturing.

If you’re operating at the front of your pipeline and you’re trying to generate interest from prospects? Then we know it’s going to take about 7-10 touches across a specific time frame (say a 60day block). I calculate it takes nearly 6mins per single opportunity per week to prospect across multi-channels. PROSPECTING!

If the prospect (deal) is engaged and it’s a matter of waiting for the prospect’s ‘buying window’ to open. For example, a contract renewal, a new need to develop, the existing supplier needs to stumble, or even the sales process is long and tedious, think enterprise sales. Then we could be said to be in the NURTURING stage, and this takes around 4mins per week, per opportunity. These times exclude attending sales meetings.

If you’re one of the many salespeople who need to manage their time across both creating new business and servicing your existing clients, you need to calculate the time you have available for both prospecting and nurturing. Then take that available time and allocate that time per opportunity. I believe, if you don’t have the time to work a prospect into a lead, you shouldn’t even start. Instead, leave it sitting ‘on the shelf’ until you have the capacity. Leave it for another day.

Consistently good, beats occasionally great, in sales.

Consistency is also important for deal progression. Reaching out once or twice and giving up on a prospect is a sure way to be unsuccessful, regardless of how good your outreach is. (Occasionally great) We now know that we need to map-out a valid multi-touch strategy to get a robust conversation started with our prospects. (Consistently good)

Having 100 leads who are pursued through just two touches is likely to be much less successful than having 25 leads who have a deliberate allocation of 6-8 careful touches. Those 25 leads are more likely to develop into conversations and move through to a conversion than those 100 leads. In this scenario, at the completion of this prospecting block, we will still have 75 lovely leads left to pursue.

As a more in-depth example, if you have 13 prospects at the front of the pipe and 12 further along, this can take around 4hrs and 8mins, per week, to stay on top of. Most Sales Leaders/ Account Managers/ Executives I talk to are surprised that it can take this long to work so few deals. If you were to multiply this by 4 to cater for 100 leads, this means you’d be spending more than 45% of your total work time working these leads (Plus you still have to add in sales meetings).

When we need to measure pipeline volume, I suggest we deliberately allocate sub-sectors inside your pipeline by size. Taking the 25 leads as an example, where appropriate, this pipeline could have five deals with a very large deal size, 5 with a large deal size, 5 with an average deal size, 5 with a lower value and finally 5 with the minimum value. The total of these leads volume hits the 3 – 5 x quota ratio. The exact ratio is dependent on your selling situation, but I think you get the idea.

The other reason smaller deals are essential to include (Small fish are the sweetest fish) is that it helps us to maintain sales momentum and sales practice. We get to stay in ‘practice’ the process of moving sales to completion with deals of all sizes. This way, we are less likely to ‘mess up’ when we get to those more important deals. (Again, being consistently good, rather than occasionally great).

Only managing the volume of a salesperson’s pipeline is not always the best approach. If we have too strong a focus on driving these volume numbers, we risk sellers, either consciously or unconsciously, loading the number of deals to meet those metrics whether they be real deals or not, or whether they have the time to develop those deals or not.

Both scenarios are less than ideal. How does your pipeline stack up?

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Some would look at the lists and use external factors to explain why less than fifty percent of salespeople fail to achieve their targets. They would be wrong to believe that things like buyers giving salespeople less time, or needing consensus, cause their poor results.

Salespeople and sales organisations struggle because they haven’t changed their sales approach to address the new realities and challenges of selling effectively. It’s not external; it’s internal.

The Limits of Your Perception

The fundamentals of selling are durable, and they don’t change very much over time. Things like prospecting, closing, negotiation, good questioning techniques, and differentiating yourself and your offering will always be part of selling. Over time, these things evolve, even if you do not recognise the evolution and even if you choose not to respond.

Recently, a sales leader told me about a person on his team who walked into a customer’s office and opened his catalogue to show the prospective client their new offerings. The salesperson is an order-taker in a world that belongs to value creators, something his sales leader knows to be true. You might not be using an approach that is as outdated as this one, but there are other areas where you need to update your traditional methods.

Prospecting Problems

Now, one of the most challenging outcomes in sales is gaining the first meeting. It’s always been difficult, but over time, their companies ask more of them, and they are less willing to meet with salespeople whom, they suspect, will waste their time. Much of the response to this trend has been the exact opposite of what is useful, believing that technology will improve results. This approach is the same as yelling at someone who doesn’t understand what you are saying, thinking that relentlessly repeating yourself but louder, is the key to changing their mind.

To improve your prospecting results, you need to change your approach by improving your value proposition for the meeting, offering your contacts a meeting that they will benefit from even if they never work with you. You make prospecting much more difficult without an approach that allows you to create value in the first call, one that provides your contact with a higher resolution lens through which to see their business and decision.

It’s an “old school” to use the phone, but it is still the best way to attend a meeting. It’s a “new school” to have an unassailable value proposition that improves your effectiveness on the phone.

Too Many Stakeholders

Another difficult challenge is avoiding the “no decision” that follows when the contacts and stakeholders in a company struggle to agree to move forward. Certain words project that a salesperson has a limited perception of the problem, like suggesting that the single contact they have been working with will be the sole decision-maker. The story concludes with a phone call from the contact, informing the salesperson that the decision-makers have decided to go in another direction.

There is every reason to believe that you are missing stakeholders, that you are going to have to work to acquire them, and that some will be opposed to the change you are helping to create. It’s also likely true that your primary contact will fear losing control of things once people express their opinions and needs.

It’s an “old school” to acquire a stakeholder in leadership who will support your initiative, which will always be helpful. It’s a “new school” approach to develop an approach to identifying the stakeholders necessary to a deal, the buying committee, and understand how to approach consensus building.

Being of Value

One of the mistakes we sometimes make in sales is loading up the sales force with so much product knowledge and technical information that their competency around pitching the product exceeds their ability to sell effectively. At some large sales kickoff meetings where I have spoken, the sales force might be required to attend five sessions on the product without a single workshop on sales skills. The emphasis on the solution can cause you to believe the solution is the value you offer.

For a salesperson to serve their clients, they have to know more about where their client’s company and their company come together. The client will always know more about their business than the salesperson, but the salesperson should still know more about the decision they are helping the client make. When you help people decide every day, and those same people make the decision infrequently, you must be the expert.

The solution is not the value you create in the sales conversation you are having with your clients. Your insights, experience, approach, and ability to provide new potential and new opportunities make up the value you provide; this is also what creates a preference to buy from you. Your solution is how you execute the advice you provide to your clients, which is an important distinction.

Selling is going to continue to evolve—maybe more than other areas of business. If you are not actively working on getting better, you are getting worse. Don’t let the limits of your perception be the limits of your results.

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There are millions of reasons that salespeople fail, and there are even more ideas about how to help them improve and succeed. But the primary reason that salespeople fail is something that is irreparable; it is something for which there is no available remedy that can be administered. Training won’t help. Neither will mentoring or coaching.

Here are five telltale signs that indicate that a person is really an order-taker and not a salesperson.

1. You Don’t Do Any Prospecting

The first sign that you are an order-taker is a serious lack of prospecting activity. Order-takers don’t embrace the fact that the value that they create for their organization and their clients begins with opening the relationships that open opportunities.

Order-takers talk a good game. They know someone at such-and-such company. They met someone at a party; it’s sure to work out as a deal. Someone’s brother works as a supplier to the big dream client. It sounds too good to be true—because it isn’t true.

Order-takers avoid prospecting like the plague. They buy the hype that there are easier ways to build a pipeline because they desperately need to believe it. It means they can keep the lie that they are really a salesperson and that they can succeed without prospecting.

2. You Love and Embrace the RFP Process

Real salespeople struggle with the RFP process. In an attempt to create a level playing field (something that salespeople know isn’t likely to benefit either them or their clients), the RFP process eliminates the salesperson’s ability to create the value that they create for their dream clients.

Order-takers love the RFP process. They feel like a real opportunities, and they provides a lot of work that makes the order-taker look and feel busy. But instead of prospecting and creating real opportunities, these so-called opportunities find their way to the order-takers desk, allowing them to avoid prospecting.

3. You Try Desperately To Take Credit for Other People’s Work

Because they have too few real prospects in their own pipeline, order-takers try to insert themselves into other deals. They work on clients who are already being pursued by inside sales or by their operations team members.

These opportunities don’t need their attention, and in some cases their involvement only makes things worse. But their involvement gives them something to talk about and something to put on their sales reports.

Order-takers want to make a contribution. They just don’t want to do the real and difficult work that is sales.

4. You Are Great In Front of Clients and Can’t Wait to Present

Order-takers believe that they are great in front of prospective clients. They believe that because they are personally likable, that this translates to effectiveness in and of itself. It doesn’t.

Order-takers aren’t tremendous value-creators because they don’t have enough appointments to get better at making sales calls. They don’t have the business acumen to really diagnose their dream client’s needs, and they don’t follow an effective sales process.

When an order-taker is fortunate enough to find themselves face-to-face with prospective clients, they present. They believe that by telling their prospective client what their company does, they can make an effective and compelling case. They can’t. It doesn’t work.

5. You Work On Renewing Existing Client Accounts

Existing clients will need to have their contracts renewed. And there is no reason to win an account if you aren’t going to do everything in your power to work on increasing and improving your wallet share and retaining the client.

But sales is about the acquisition of new clients, not just the maintenance and renewal of existing clients.

Order-takers make way too much of renewals, pretending to themselves and to everyone else that renewals are time-consuming and complicated affairs that need their direct attention.

These are all telltale signs that the person in question is an order-taker—not a salesperson. Salespeople don’t wait for deals to walk themselves in; they go out and make it rain.

Conclusion

The primary reason that salespeople fail is because they aren’t really salespeople. These people have job titles that suggest that they are in sales, and they work in the sales department of an organisation. They even report to a sales manager. But even though all of these things are true, they are salespeople in name only.

The reasons this group of people who we call salespeople fail in their role as salespeople is that they have never embraced selling. They don’t embrace selling, and they don’t see themselves as professional salespeople.

They are uncomfortable prospecting because they don’t believe in what they are doing. They suffer call reluctance because they don’t feel strongly enough about what they are doing; they don’t feel right asking for an appointment.

They are uncomfortable asking for and obtaining commitments, and they reject using any commitment-obtaining language.

Occasionally, they make some deals because they are good, hard working people. But because they never embrace sales, they never really succeed. Instead they move from one sales job to another sales job, usually because they want the high rewards that come with success in sales, rewards they never obtain.

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Many so called “experts” claim that there are two types of salespeople – Hunters and Farmers.

Salespeople, so these experts claim, are either one or the other. Consequently they fit one sales position or another. In my experience, having spent decades working with salespeople at every level in a wide variety of segments, salespeople don’t fit into these neat stereotypes.

The myth about Hunters and Farmers in Selling has been overtaken by a business reality.

Before we crack the myth let’s take a look at where the concept came from in the first place.

The person credited with starting the concept of ‘Hunters and Farmers’, which has been adopted by some sales managers and many business leaders, was the American sometime radio talk show host and psychoanalyst, Thom Hartmann. He initially proposed the farmer / hunter metaphor to explain the origins of what we now know, as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD*) to help his own son (who suffered from ADHD) adjust to the condition.

Some of the characteristics that have been defined for people who have ADHD include:

Find it hard to concentrate; makes careless mistakes; does not seem to listen; avoids difficult tasks; becomes easily distracted and are disorganised and forgetful; does not follow through on instructions and can’t finish work.

This (hunter / farmer) theory was extrapolated to those salespeople who are labelled Hunters implying that they have ADHD and anti-selling contradicting characteristics. However, there is no proof to assert that ADHD and Hunters are associated in anyway. This is how myths start. What we do know is that salespeople come in all shapes and sizes and many can be successful given the right conditions.

The term Hunter has become a default term for new business development. It is not uncommon to hear sales managers describe Hunters as hard selling, cold-callers who deal with buyers where benefits are limited to narrowly framed needs. Farmers on the other hand are often viewed as being more “customer-centric”, solutions oriented and able to develop trust. If one listened to the “experts” Hunters are brutish, self-centred and uncaring, and Farmers are gentle focused, sensitive and trustworthy. If that wasn’t bad enough, many recruitment consultants conduct personnel assessments to identify if a candidate is either a Farmer or Hunter.

A popular tool used to assess sales personalities and identify “the right kind of personality for a salesperson” is a ‘personality profile’ assessment known as DiSC**. This assessment comes up with these same conclusions, though it doesn’t make use of the descriptive titles Hunter or Farmer. Usually, these reports are delivered with a bullet-point summary about the characteristics of the person and the kind of work that should be assigned to the individual.

The reports include recommendations for hunters and those candidates who are farmers similar to this:

The candidate is mostly a Hunter and is best suited to:

• Bringing in new business
• Working in new sales territories
• Focusing on prospect conversion
• Sales that require minimal post-sales follow-up
• Tends to sell best when on his / her own
• Comfortable in pushing for a close

The candidate is mostly a Farmer and is best suited to:

• Optimising sales in existing accounts
• Comfortable in identifying additional buyers
• Proactive in building relationships
• Matches product benefits to diverse needs
• Good at solving customer problems Demonstrates attention to detail Meticulous in fulfilling administrative responsibilities

Here is the challenge. If one assumes that Hunters have specific characteristics that Farmers don’t, and vice versa, then:

• Hunters aren’t interested in solving customer problems and farmers aren’t interested in closing deals; yet, in today’s market place, salespeople unable to help buyers solve problems and then offer solutions with some degree of confidence, aren’t likely to succeed.

• Farmers have some unique ability that gives them exposure to senior executives and hunters can’t develop trust that is the foundation of a sound business relationship with C-Level decision makers and yet, if salespeople can’t get to build trust-based relationships with decision-makers they aren’t likely to get the business irrespective of whether they are hunters or farmers.

The costly consequences of maintaining the Hunter / Farmer Myth

These conclusions (made by various consultants) make no sense whatsoever. Employing hunter and farmer sales teams increases costs and often confuses buyers. In addition, the potential benefits of shared knowledge, experiences and synergies are lost. Worse, sales managers, already under pressure to manage complex sales teams, are now being asked to lead two diverse groups, often with conflicting objectives (hunters with a supposedly new business focus and farmers with a relationship focus).

Effective sales development has demonstrated that with the right training and coaching in a sales organisation that is strategically aligned, and where sales managers are doing their job in leading (rather than merely managing) the sales force, coaching and mentoring, then the right type of profile for professional salespeople is a more realistic blended characterisation of both hunter and farmer.

Those organisations who have a better understanding and develop their own benchmark for what ‘good salespeople’ should look like, and should be doing, are the ones that are gaining incremental share of spend and capturing more of the support of their target market, simply because buyers are working with people who are professionals rather than people who have only half the competence needed for the job.

*we acknowledge that the medical jury is out about the authenticity of ADHD as an actual disorder.

** DISC is simple quadrant profiling system and is similar to MBTI. They are most useful in helping people understand different communication and decision making styles of people. These tools were never designed as proper psychometric assessment tools and they do not provide an in-depth analysis of the intricacies of personality. However, many people still use them when recruiting

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LinkedIn reports show that sales organisations are quickly embracing the “new normal”:  

• 77% are holding more video meetings
• 51% are sending more emails  
• 57% are making more phone calls

But what does this really mean for sales?

Many well-established businesses used to have most of their processes in person, often making the most of events and tradeshows. In addition, successful enterprise teams take time to develop and train until they produce results. How does that translate to purely digital? 

There are a few key elements to keep in mind in order to face the new challenges for sales. Let’s break them down.

Not business as usual

It’s crucial to start with the right mindset. Think about creating a work culture that encourages collaboration and support among your team. Leaders need to help sales reps be prepared, and have all the information and resources they need. 

Tiffani Bova, Global Customer Growth and Innovation Evangelist at Salesforce, lists empathy as one of the key elements to sell from home. This applies to your team, but also for your prospects and leads. It means to truly try to understand what everyone is going through.

Solutions instead of pitches

When developing new and nurturing existing relationships, we need to identify how we can help our clients and add real value under the crisis. Some deals will definitely make sense to move forward, while other items may not.

As Brynne Tillman from Social Sales Link explains: “Pivot. Find out what your clients need now. Their current state is very different than 8 weeks ago, figure out how you can be a resource for them now, and they will do business with you when the time is right!”. 

Lead a conversation where you can truly help the prospect explore all aspects of their situation, and help them rethink their strategy. Provide data so that the client makes informed decisions, based on quantifiable information.

Listening is vital to achieving this. Sales reps that listen are more successful, and the right solution comes from a customer-centric approach.

Making the most of video calls

Active listening and empathy need to be present in the most popular communication channel under COVID-19: video calls.

A few simple tips, like remembering to introduce everyone and turning your camera on (so many salespeople don’t), can make these conversations more efficient. 

This is also a chance to get creative. For example, some teams now send food delivery gift cards to invite prospects to a “virtual lunch”, while others have branded promotional packages with items to equip a home office delivered when scheduling a call. 

Whichever strategy your team comes up with, the idea is not to make a virtual version of a face-to-face action, but rather embrace a remote mindset. This can be as simple as to call to check how your clients are doing, or hosting a Q&A session for their team. The dynamic should make the prospect feel comfortable and, most of all, heard. Rather than just scheduling an online demo, be available for a conversation.

Finding the right tools for virtual selling

Sales reps are already familiar with the tools they normally need to reach their targets. However, as plans are re-prioritized, this might be the time to allocate time to test and develop new processes that can continue after the pandemic.

There are many options for sales engagement tools, like MixMax, Mailshake or Outreach. Your team probably knows CRMs like Salesforce or HubSpot, or even Freshsales, Insightly or Zoho. 

To make the most of what you already have, work with the IT department in your company and focus on integration with other apps, like work management ones as Trello or communication tools like Slack.

Pay special attention to integrations that could work with email and phone, as reps are heavily relying on that. Tools like SendinBlue and Aircall could help improve prospecting processes on those channels.

Discuss as a team where the pain points are, and then work on improving processes and tools with a clear goal. 

Connecting through LinkedIn

When it comes to nurturing relationships, social media has been delivering great results for quite a while. Under this new scenario, using LinkedIn to find and connect with prospects and clients has never been more valuable.

LinkedIn has a few recommendations for virtual sales prospecting: 

• Create a strong professional brand by participating actively with posts, articles and engaging in conversations around your industry.
• ABC: Always Be Connecting. Build trusted relationships by expanding your network 
• Asking insightful questions and focus on the right people to prospect smarter 

Time to adapt and innovate

Instead of holding to the processes that you had before COVID-19, take the chance to innovate and create a healthy and sustainable digital workspace for your team. As we navigate through this crisis, sales, leaders and buyers are learning to adapt together.

Those who embrace the new challenges are the ones who are thriving. Eventually, business will recover. The key is what your team will learn now that will help them come out of this wiser and stronger.

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