If you believe there is an easy button for success in sales, the joke’s on you! While there’s tremendous value in a vast array of digital tools, all emerging technologies have a dark side.

Take the internet itself and its use for nefarious purposes: I wish the majority of its usage were for knowledge. How many people are studying the rich tradition of human history, MOOC learning, culture and fostering communal collaboration to break down cultural barriers, cure cancer and end the common cold?

It’s overwhelming to fathom that the internet has become a TV substitute. The Social Networks are laughing all the way to the bank monetizing your time. But you can be laughing all the way to the bank, too, if you realize this.

One of the most powerful things in the world that you can personally do to improve your life and business career, sales or otherwise is to turn off TV and social media. Understand where the new school tools fit in and acknowledge their place in the cosmos. Modernized sellers who are deadly serious about being elite performers in their field use them differently, I assure you. A cautionary tale privately emailed to me:

“Tony, Building our sales team and I just had to fire a sales rep who was only emailing and messaging on LinkedIn and logging fake sales on our CRM. He tanked our company and I’m back to square one building from the ground up. Your post resonated with me and reinforces my belief that HUMAN not ‘social’ connections are the best. Picking up the phone, sitting down for a coffee, flying in for a meeting…are irreplaceable experiences.” – Anonymous

I’ve polled thousands of you from every continent and walk of life, from transactional to enterprise flights, to massively matrixed, complex government procurement cycles that can take 36 months. The jury is in that the phone is still absolutely essential to develop business at every stage of the funnel.

To make the most money possible, the top reps in your company and industry have figured out how to manage their time, leverage old and new tools to position themselves as a trusted advisor and subject matter expert. They’ve figured out which opportunities to prioritise in a pipeline and what they need to close to hit their number.

The simplest way to get there is to build ultra-targeted prospect lists, dial on them yourself with a razor sharp value proposition and set the appointment, don’t try to sell the product. Social is a phenomenal tool for locating which prospects to go after and getting foreknowledge of what they’ll care about but paradoxically, super personalized communication can be a repellent.

Sales Managers who work for ambitious CFOs often prognosticate fantastical growth rates. 30% is not an industry standard, it’s a mass delusion. This is why there’s blowtorch management going on where 10 lemmings get hired so they can systematically fire 7. I can’t help you if you are inside a blowtorch culture. If you have a fair management system, quality product market fit, and you are on a global team in which 20-40% of your peers are hitting their number or exceeding it, so can you!

There’s no secret to sales. You need to hustle and work harder than anyone else to make it pay off for you. “It’s no longer a numbers game,” is a band-aid for the lazy modern seller. I want to contort that statement the other way: it’s harder than it’s ever been. If you truly knew how hard you’d have to work to be successful in this game, you’d probably quit.

Maintain a good sense of humour. See things more clearly, don’t buy into things being more different than the same. Observe the actual day-to-day behaviour of top reps on your team and in your industry. Study the old school and fuse it with the new school. Look at your PHONE as the ultimate social device: “the social phone.” Invest in the best tools money can buy and read your company the Riot Act if they don’t invest in you. They spent 15-25K to recruit you, they can spend the price of a cell phone getting you the best tech for prospecting due diligence.

20% of any system will drive 80% of the results. 20% of any given day’s work will engender 80% of output. That means shockingly 80% of every day is waste, friends! The Pareto Principle is alive and well in all human systems. So in order to optimise the levers that will get you to your financial goal, it’s critical to focus on the most constructive revenue producing daily activities. That’s “tripling” a targeted list – call, text – LinkedIn invite. That’s methodically attacking the same 50 targets for an entire quarter top down, bottom up, middle out, lateral, by bee swarm, referrals, and teamlinks.

After decades years of looking at this stuff, I would say that chasing the wrong people to sell them things they’ll never need is the biggest error. You need to get crystal clear about your target list.

Step one: Go after the competitors of your existing clients. Go after the companies your own direct competitor is working with and are listed on their website.

Step two: You are only as strong as your own intel, just like in war. If you can get an edge, it’s massive. If you can read any LinkedIn Profile, even one that’s hidden to you, it’s pivotal. If you can get a direct phone number to add the power of your tone, intention, and warmth to the sales cycle, it’s imperative.

Elite athletes spend 10,000 hours honing their craft and know every stat down to the wire. They will spend any amount of money getting their driver in golf to weigh one less ounce or having one more component on their racing bike, be made of carbon fibre seeking aerodynamics to crest the hill faster in the Tour de France.

Per Einstein, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” You can’t do what hundreds of millions of people are doing and get an elite, unusual, uncommon result. You can’t just social sell or just pound phones, or just use one method of sales.

You’ll get noticed by swimming upstream against the current. You’ll stand out like a sore thumb by doing anachronistic things like writing handwritten notes. You’ll make waves by blending multiple channels in combinations. You’ll jut out by exhibiting business acumen and understanding the fundamentals of how your prospect makes money and SWOTTING where they’re weak.

You’ll get VIP status if you have a confident, sardonic and knowing chuckle because, like them, you are laughing all the way to the bank. You can bank on my methods in these posts, field tested by thousands, and influenced by thousands.

I wish I could tell you, cold calls are dead and it’s all just social selling. The savviest sellers are using both. Top reps are interrupting their “dream prospects” and landing meetings which are converting into rich opportunity pipeline and closing millions in new business. You’ve gotta spark people to realise and react the “pain of same is greater than the pain of change.”

There are too many paradoxes in sales to simplify something that is really an art form. E.g., reconcile these two quotes for me:

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

Abraham Lincoln

“I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who had practiced one kick 10,000 times.”

Bruce Lee

I’d look at these two quotes like this to master the art of sales. Abe Lincoln is the strategy piece and Bruce Lee is the tactical piece. There is no Strategy without effective tactics and effective tactics fall down without a stellar strategy.

The post What The Best Sales People Do! appeared first on Head Of Sales.

We’ve all been there: a sea of people, pulled together from across the country or region, locked in a windowless room with artificial light, seated at round tables with mints and water, patiently waiting for the parade of presenters to finish their ‘Death by PowerPoint’ presentations so we can get to the coffee station during the day and then the bar at night to start really engaging with our colleagues. During the day some relief can be found in the smartphones that everyone will be less and less discreetly looking at repeatedly, checking messages and social media for something to actually engage in, as the show drags on.

Every now and then the boredom is punctuated by some lively motivational speaker who tells us ‘You can do anything!’ (insert FIST PUMP), ‘Just believe in yourself’ (insert HIGH FIVE), ‘Be positive and great things will happen for you’ (insert VISUALISATION EXERCISE), ‘Now turn and tell the person next to you why you are so awesome and deserve endless riches’ (insert GROUP ACTIVITY), ‘Think about the challenges you have overcome that made you who you are’ (insert STORYTELLING). And so on.

This interlude is like a sugar hit. Perks people up for a short while, and then fades again.

The sales conference may have a big awards night or extracurricular activities, an entertainment extravaganza filled with lots of fun things to do, lots of food and drink, lots of prize giving, etc. That is fine, that can be appropriate. On top of that, participants simply might enjoy the location, the hotel, meeting colleagues, getting some time out. But is this what the conference should be all about?

So let’s start to rethink why and how we run sales conferences.

Why have a sales conference?

They are expensive to run and time consuming so we had better make it worth our while. Be clear about what you are actually trying to achieve. If the purpose is to get people together, interact, have a good time away from work, fine. But if it is about selling, sharing or generating knowledge, or any other topics relevant for everyday work, you cannot leave achieving such a goal to chance, or PowerPoint.

Purpose & Context

• There must be an overarching purpose to running a sales conference, a meaningful story and context that people can relate to.
• Set clear goals. What are you trying to achieve by running the sales conference?
  • Launch a new game changing product or service?
  • Reset the culture and team dynamics?
  • Launch the new sales strategy?
  • Bring the team together to focus on new capabilities, competitive edge, etc.?
• Have a plan. A good conference follows a logic thread, a storyline, it systematically builds something up and guides people to this result.

Make sure you are very clear about what you are trying to achieve. And any motivational speakers you bring into the mix must serve this purpose and context. Any extracurricular activities can still add flavour to this mix if planned and done well.

How to run a sales conference

There are a number of simple guidelines to follow to get your sales conference right:

• Actively engage people from the outset. Make it clear that they are not meant to be passive recipients of whatever kind of messages.
• Set context and purpose, and then create the right environment for active engagement. Make sure your preparation work has identified not only what is important to the organisation, but also what is relevant for the participants.
• Creating meaningful engagement acts as a catalyst for positive change and momentum. Giving your audience the chance to participate and contribute creates more buy-in than most motivational speakers.
• Rather than talking at the audience and telling them what we want them to hear and do, why not turn it around and make the audience the content providers, the active participants and the bringers of wisdom? Turn the audience into active contributors.

We have helped many companies turn around their sales conferences into dynamic actively engaged events that ignite opportunity and lead people to the future where they feel a sense of ownership and can-do moving forward beyond the conference.

Designing activities that stimulate communication and tap into the wisdom of the room in more concrete, meaningful ways is key.

Here is an example:

Recently, we started working with a new client who had just taken over the role as head of sales. We helped him prepare the new sales strategy, including their value proposition, sales messaging and a new solution sales approach. He had an upcoming sales conference for 150 people to kick off this new strategy. This was a make or break situation as the previous sales strategies and sales conferences had fallen short of expectations and went nowhere in the long run. Yet his people were desperately wanting direction and purpose; they loved their company and wanted to see it succeed.

Our client wanted the sales conference to deliver the following:

1. Re-energise and focus the sales teams to a true customer centric sales strategy and get them excited about how they fit into it.
2. Explain and align them to the company’s purpose and values.
3. Give them one view across all of the businesses and organisational capability.
4. Set out a high level sales strategy and plan, and then set some goals for the year, for both managers and their teams.
5. Help team members have a clear understanding of each of the key customer value propositions across their offerings.
6. Ensure the team members understand what they will be prioritising in the coming 12 months, and what success looks like if they achieve those priorities.
7. Get individual teams started to develop their own plans for how they will contribute to the overall plan.
8. On top of that ensure that everyone will have fun along the way.

Our client wanted to hear people saying:

“That was the best and most inspiring sales conference I have ever been to”.

“I know where I fit in, and what I’ve got to do, and I’m excited about the future”.

And that is what he got.

We designed a sales conference that was full of enriching activities that all linked back to his goals for the team. Day 1 set the scene and Day 2 became an active ‘market place’, a beehive of purposeful activity, focused on starting the transition from a culture of transactional selling to a solution selling culture.

Case study driven and focused on diversity, teamwork, learning and active communication, the teams were empowered to learn all about what their company offered their clients – products, services, solutions, people and value. Instead of enduring a dozen slideshows about company division, products and services, 150 people worked simultaneously and actively in small teams across the day assessing situations, solving problems, learning about new opportunities and solutions, learning from each other, getting to know each other.

As a ‘side-effect’ they also gathered all the information that otherwise would have been presented to them in the traditional way. But in the context of real life case studies they could immediately contextualise and use this information. It stuck right away. The owners of all this information also were happy, because they had the opportunity not only to present, but to engage and interact with their audience and hence position themselves much more effectively.

At 4pm on Day 2, the conference was still pumping. People were on task actively engaged and supporting each other. The energy was focused and aligned. It never waned from 8.30am on Day 1.

We had many people come to us saying how wonderful this was. How happy they were. This energy has carried over into the workplace. Now active work is happening to bring about the changes needed and everybody is on board and wanting to make it happen.

A sales conference can’t change everything overnight but it can ignite opportunity, purpose and agency. It’s about engaging the very people who attend and making them the active participants and leaders of change.  When sales conferences are designed with the participants in mind they can:

• Help develop and reinforce a culture and team that is highly engaged and performing in the market place.
• Create a sense of belonging and understanding of where they fit in, and mutual obligation to each other to deliver for customers.
• Build confidence that there is a plan in place for teams to follow and be supported to deliver, but also that there will be accountability for outcomes
• Present a clear direction of what is expected of everyone and where they fit in.
• Present the opportunity to be supported and challenged by each other
• Create a sense of ownership and engagement over what everyone is accountable for.

Remember everybody lives by selling something.

The post Igniting purpose across the sales team appeared first on Head Of Sales.

Two years ago, the management team at REA Group, Australia’s number one property platform, decided it was time to take a journey of powerful and purposeful digital transformation. The business was fast expanding into new markets, organically and by acquisition. Its legacy systems were not designed to cope with the increasing expectations of a market demanding seamless, real-time individualisation and meaningful, relevant connection.

To grow at pace but still be nimble enough to defend its position at the top, REA Group required the forward vision, insight and trend-spotting capabilities offered by data analytics.

REA Group brought on board a Salesforce suite to make its data-driven vision a reality. Vitally, this united data front allowed for the formation of a single point of truth for every customer, one that was available across the organisation, rather than being held in siloed departments and acquired businesses.

The REA Group journey to its digitally dominant position today as an organisation that changes the way the world experiences property – a company that refers to itself as “a leading global digital business specialising in property” – is a perfect case study for numerous data points that came out of the fourth edition of the State of Sales report.

Sales ops fuels organisational growth

For example, 89% of sales professionals said sales ops plays a critical role in growing the business. Clearly, sales ops played a lead role in REA Group’s development of a single point of truth for each customer.

“There’s a lot of work that the sales ops team has done in collaboration to create that single point of truth,” says Rodney House, REA Group’s Sales Adoption Lead: Customer Excellence. “That data is used to drive the business of the account managers within our business.”

“The biggest thing our Chief Sales Officer wants is for our sales team to see our customers more often but, when they do, for them to have a better-quality conversation. So actually, it’s about quality and quantity at once – he wants more shots on goal and more of those shots to go in.”

That’s not possible without a single point of data truth, Rodney says.

The sales professionals who go out and speak to the market, he explains, are the engine of the organisation. The Salesforce system, and the data and insights it provides, makes that engine run far more efficiently and much faster.

“We can see now in real time whether we are having more conversations quarter-on-quarter, as well as whether those conversations are driving value,” Rodney says. “Those are statistics that would never have been known around the organisation before.”

Sales ops is cross-functional and strategic

Similarly, 85% of sales people say sales ops is becoming increasingly strategic. In fact, within REA Group there is now a Chief Sales Officer, a role that simply didn’t exist two years ago.

“Two years ago, we were structured by market – residential, commercial, etc.,” says Smrithi Kamtikar, Senior Manager Product at REA Group. “Then we took the opportunity to move to a more functional structure, and that was when our Sales teams came together into one function.”

“Since then, from a platform perspective, we’ve been on a journey of dramatic simplification, with the end goal of putting in place the right experiences for our customers and ensuring our platform supports teams like Sales and Customer support who in turn support our customers..”

Another fact to come out of the State of Sales report was that high-performing sales teams were 2.3 times more likely than underperforming teams to increase the cross-functional nature of their work. In fact, 48% of sales ops teams surveyed have increased their involvement in cross-functional workstream management.

Within REA Group, most of our discussions tend to be cross-functional ones, Smrithi says. At quarterly planning sessions, she says, a multi-disciplinary team that includes sales discusses shared goals and common challenges, combining their wisdom, experience and knowledge to develop actions and solutions.

Those discussions, and so many more within the business, are made far easier where we have relevant and insightful data into our market and customer needs.

Data reveals the future

“From a macro point of view, we’re constantly reinvesting in our data to support good business decisions,” Smrithi says.

“We’re also doing it to make sure we can take the next big step forward, which is about becoming more predictive and proactive across all our customer channels – regardless of whether they are digital or face to face channels.”

“We don’t want to look backwards, we want to look forwards and have the ability to predict what our customers might want, and to identify gaps in the market, and to know which product or which approach best solves specific customer pain points.”

From a micro point of view, Rodney discusses the way a performance discussion might go between an account manager and their sales manager, with the insight provided by data.

“We’ve definitely moved to more data-led coaching,” he says. “We describe it as ‘less feels and more facts’. So rather than sitting down and saying, ‘I think I’m doing well’, they can now say, ‘I have made this amount of calls and off the back of that I can see that I have issues with this particular product, because I close the other product more often’.”

“Central to everything we’re doing right now is the driving of a coaching culture. Some people considered coaching as being a bit of a soft art. But actually, when you marry those two things together – the empathy of coaching and the hard facts of data – that’s when the real magic happens.”

Find out the latest sales trends and insights guiding sales professionals to recover and grow in the fourth edition of the State of Sales report.

More articles from Salesforce

How Fisher & Paykel Redefined Its Approach To Sales

Six Traits Of Great Sales Reps

It’s time for sales leaders to rethink how they lead

50 Pro Sales Tips eBook

The post How REA Group Built Its New Sales Strategy Around Data appeared first on Head Of Sales.

Why is this important to know? 

Suppose you’re posting content or using LinkedIn to help you with any part of your business, such as business development, marketing or personal branding. In that case, a large amount of your strategy is going to be reliant on your potential customers being able to see your activity or your profile easily.

Changes to the LinkedIn algorithm impact how, when and why your content or your profile is displayed to others. 

This is why, if you use LinkedIn regularly, it is in your best interest, to know what to do and, just as importantly, what not to do, to help you reach those eye-balls.

Why now?

With both a new algorithm now released and most of us now having access to the new user interface, this is a perfect opportunity to share some of the fundamental changes. Here are some things you might want to think about when you’re posting or interacting on the platform.

Key Changes. 

1) New Easy Wins

All-Star Profile / SSI Score impacts.

Your LinkedIn Social Selling Index (SSI) is a score of 100 which measures how effective you are with the four pillars: Create a Professional Brand, Find the Right People, Engage with Insights and Build Strong Relationships. The maximum score for each pillar is 25.

HOW DO I FIND MY SSI SCORE? RIGHT HERE. 

LinkedIn awards those who complete their profile to the ‘All-Star’ level by increasing the number of people who will see their content (increased reach). Likewise, the higher your SSI score the higher your reach.

Reach relates to the number of people who will see your initial post, so it is fundamental to your LinkedIn success.

An ‘All-Star’ profile has a reach of X 1.5 above an ‘Intermediate profile’ and ‘the lesser ‘Beginner’ profile suffers a minus reach penalty of X 0.5

An SSI score greater than 60 has a positive effect on your reach; anything below has a negative impact on your reach.

Users with an SSI score greater than 90 have an X 1.5 increase on their reach.

What should you do?

Ensure your profile is complete to reach that all-star. Manage your LinkedIn activity to make sure your SSI is not negatively impacting your reach.

2) Key Changes for content posting.

DWELL Time 

LinkedIn now awards posts that make people DWELL on their content. Such as multi-page PDFs or other rich media.

This change is an attempt to increase the quality of the posts and move away from those short, text-based click-bait style of posts. You know the ones where you click ‘see more’ only to be seriously let down.

Timings of posts 

The Golden hour is dead! The life of posts in our feeds has been extended and will now show into your connections feed for a longer time than before. (up to 5 days). 

This means we won’t need to post every day or to react immediately to our connections posts or to comments on our posts (Just within the first 24hrs) to increase virality. It also means we can spend more time building quality content (see DWELL time, above).

It also means LinkedIn pods, groups of people organised to interact with each other’s content to boost engagement, are now less effective. 

If you have a piece of content that is gathering good levels of engagement, refrain from posting again until the engagement levels have dropped. Instead, reinvigorate your original post, through comments, to see another +15% engagement on that post.

#Hashtags

Hashtags are considered a bit of a mystery on LinkedIn. We should use hashtags to help others find our content and to ‘file’ our content into the right search buckets for others on LinkedIn whom we are not connected too. 

For best results ONLY use hashtags that have more than 100,000 followers. 

It’s not as straight forward as you might think.

#Sales = 5.85Million followers

#SalesDevelopment = 22k followers

#Prospectiing = 9k followers

To determine the strength of a hashtag simply search the hashtag within LinkedIn’s search window. 

Whilst using a maximum of only 3 hashtags was the advice in 2019 now it seems the sweet spot is 3 – 9 Hashtags in a post, but no more. 

What should you do?

Write content that has more detail and can hold your audiences’ attention. Try writing long-form posts and repurpose them into PDFs or other rich media and post them that way.

Be prepared to leave the post to run for at least 24 – 48hrs. 

Interact with your post using comments, as they are the most effective, with all of those who interact with the post. Do this inside the first 24hrs.

Finally, use a mixture of well followed hashtags, between 3 and 9, that are likely to drag people from outside of your network into the post.

3) Reengaging lost connections.

There is no doubt adding many useless connections has become a daily sport for many on LinkedIn. People connect with us, and we never hear from them again. This means many have a focus on building their network via quantity, rather than building relationships. This is the wrong strategy, IMO.

The chances are, you are already connected to a bunch of people who can help you achieve your goals. You just need to reengage them. Good news.

The algorithm is looking for ways to supply you with content interesting enough to hold you inside the LinkedIn platform. It doesn’t want you to leave and go elsewhere. It’s always looking for clues so it can better understand what it is that you want to see so it can give it to you. 

So, if you would like to see more of someone’s posts or activity, let the algorithm know by being very deliberate in reengaging them. 

Comment on their posts, endorse them for skill, give them kudos, send a message or two. Should you carry out two or three of these activities inside a 7day period, LinkedIn will register that and start to place your content and activity at the top of each other’s feed.

This is gold for managing both new business opportunities and for maintaining strong relationships with your existing clients.

What should you do?

Create a list (use ‘leads’ in SalesNAV if you have it) of people you need to ‘stay in touch with’ and then deliberately create those two or three interactions across that first week. Once they reconnect and your interacting again you can slow the activity down to stay truly ‘connected’.

These 3 hacks will help you pick up the easy wins on LinkedIn as you prepare your social and digital selling strategy for 2021. You’ll be much more effective with just these few tweaks to your playbook.

Other new things you might want to check out.

• Tagging lots of people in your posts will negatively impact your post.
  • Posting links in the first comment is no longer useful (if it ever was).
  • Pressing the SHARE button is not a worthwhile activity. LinkedIn knows it’s a duplicate post and won’t spread it further.
  • LinkedIn live has low levels of engagement.
  • Video should be less than 1min, never more than 3mins long and posted natively.
  • Followers see much less of your content than connections do.

All these findings are either from my own research, observations and the analytics I’ve generated from using tools like shieldapp.ai or from speaking with other LinkedIn experts and trainers either in some of our chat communities or directly in my BOSS podcast.  

However, there is one person who is considered the real ‘source of truth’ for all of these conversations. Richard Van Der Blom’s research is both smart and methodical and the base for many of these suggestions. Richards’ study measured over 4500 posts at 15min intervals to determine what works, what happens and what doesn’t. 

I suggest you access a more in-depth review of all the changes here directly from Richard. 

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/newsletter-4-linkedin-algorithm-research-2020-you-van-der-blom/

The post LinkedIn Algorithm HACKS appeared first on Head Of Sales.

The blueprint for sales success in an enterprise company is unlikely to work for small business. Likewise, sales strategies for highly regulated industries such as healthcare and financial service are unlikely to work for retail.

Opinions (and input) from external parties who have industry experience, matter. Your direct competitors might be well positioned to locate the missing pieces to the puzzle but the chances in having a competitor share sensitive information, is highly unlikely and more importantly anti-competitive.

‘Trial and error’ is an option adopted by many, although the opportunity cost of fixing an error or pivoting in a reactive manner, is high once you’ve committed time and resources to achieve plan A. Sometimes, there is no turning back or a suitable plan B.

When formulating or choosing a strategy, using quantitative data will help to realign emotion and intuition reducing the need of navigating blindly and relying on guesswork. If your ‘gut feel’ is right at least 51% of the time (technically a majority win), the expected value from a coin toss will only deliver hope rather than certainty.

The global State of Sales 2020 report, conducted between 13 May to 30 June 2020, surveyed 5,951 full-time sales professionals across Asia Pacific, North America, Europe, Africa and the Middle East and – all respondents were third-party panelists (not limited to Salesforce customers).

The top four sales tactics for success over the next 12 months were:

1. Increased flexibility with customers

2. Improved data quality and accessibility

3. Simplified sales processes

4. Personalised outreach

Why is each strategy important and how sales leaders can do it better?

4. Personalising Outreach

Authored by Jo Schonheim, Head of Sales and Marketing of True Sydney.

By (my) definition, personalising outreach refers to the tailoring of targeted outbound marketing. It can be personalised either to the individual recipient or organisation, and in a myriad of ways. Either addressing something about the recipient (their name, their role, a personal attribute), the company or industry they’re in. Mission critical, it includes something specifically of value to them: an industry insight, a personalised offer or CTA (Call to Action).

The intention is to demonstrate empathy; so the recipient feels seen and understood. Two of the most important things us mere mortals crave. This is powerful in forging foundations of rapport and connection. 

It’s important as the more personalised it is, the more likely it is to resonate. The more powerfully it resonates, the more likely it is to have impact and elicit an emotional response in a prospect. Afterall, emotion drives behaviour. And behaviour drives action.

It’s also rare, meaning it stands out and cuts through the noise.

Can you remember receiving a personalised piece of Marketing?
What was your reaction?
What was your opinion of the organisation after reading it?
Did you sit up and pay more attention?

I’m guessing worst case, you lingered over it longer then you normally would, before fast filing it? And best case, it sparked enough curiosity causing you to act on the CTA, and click through?  Am I right?

All great outbound marketing shouldn’t be to try and SELL. And by great, I mean effective. It should be to pique enough CURIOSITY to move prospects to the NEXT STEP (through the CTA).

How Can Sales Leaders Can Do It Better? 

1. Less is more. Like time with family, it’s Quality over Quantity.
Gone are the days of “it’s a numbers game”. Volume is for spam.
And there’s no ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ card if you get slapped with a Spam filter.
Niche your focus when building your Leads List so you can afford the time to personalise your marketing.

2. Precision is everything; without a target, you’re bound to hit it.
Get laser focused on not just WHO you want to target, but WHAT you want to achieve. What’s the Objective? Get clear on what success looks like for your outbound reach. 
Define the Outcome and reverse engineer achieving it.

3. One hour’s thinking, 5 minutes work – not 5 mins thinking, an hour’s work
Don’t be that douche that failed to plan. Think it through and craft your message (and yes, typos and poor grammar erode trust and credibility faster than one dares to imagine).
Slack input equals sloppy output, which will just see you work harder, to achieve less. 

4. Empathy: take time to know what you don’t know.
Research, prepare and share valuable insights. Insights could be talking to their pain points, developments in their industry or movement in their market. Your objective is to deliver value straight out of the gates; capturing their attention in the first few seconds. No more powerful way to do so, than to personalise with empathy, so it feels like you’re talking to them, about them in a personal human-to-human way. Remember, resonance drives action.

5. Being dry as toast is not going to land the lead.
You are not a robot. So bin the corporate speak. Remember, you are a human speaking to another human. Use a human voice, in a professional tone. Don’t be afraid to be a little cheeky; capturing attention is different to seeking attention.

The Golden Rule: Resonance is Everything.

3. Simplifying the Sales Process

Authored by Bill Beedie, Head of Sales ANZ at Houston We Have

Establishing a Sales Process in a sales organisation used to be fairly straight forward. The Sales Process was a set of repeatable steps that a sales person and business would undertake to move a prospective buyer from Suspect through to Client. Whilst allowing for industry/company variations the main stages would involve: Prospecting, Preparation and Approach, Demonstrations/Presentations, Negotiations, Close and Implementation.

It was ALL about The Seller’s Sales Process!. How we reached out, educated, persuaded and eventually won over the client.

TODAY EVERYTHING HAS CHANGED – from Buyer Push to Customer Pull.

Sophisticated buyers of today do their own research online through a variety of digital and social platforms and by the time they reach your business they will likely know what they want, what you offer, and what price they want to move forward.

The “Buyers Journey” is now the start of the sales process and the implications of this are profound for sales operations not yet on board with this new paradigm.

Is the Modern Sales process now more or less complex? New processes may first appear daunting, complex and fragmented, however once the rules, processes and technology of the new game are embedded, it will prove to be simpler. We will get more done, using less resource, to reach target markets more effectively and do business faster.

How Can Sales Leaders Can Do It Better? 

1. Marketing and Sales need to work seamlessly to deliver high value experiences for new and current clients
2. Don’t focus on your product or service (no one cares), it’s what your solution or service does to assist clients with their problems, so do you really know your customer and your value proposition
3. If clients are researching online, can they find you, will they see value in how you profile your services, goods, and culture, will they be comfortable you can assist them in their business
4. When clients reach out for information is your business adding value to their investigation, i.e. quality digital assets, value add white papers, testimonials, etc
5. Are your sales team members skilled using online tools for investigation and know how to professionally contact and follow up
6. Are your sales people adding value to the clients “Journey”, clients are looking for things they don’t know: insights on business, their market, trends in the industry, examples of how you’ll make it work for them
7. Traditional soft sales skills in business, negotiating skills, relationship building, are still critical but now need to be applied in the new paradigm, is your sales team digitally enabled?

It’s an extraordinary time in B2B sales and business leaders and sales leaders alike need to stay on top of current trends and invest in technology and their people to stay abreast of the challenges and take full advantage of the benefits, the digital and social media age offer. 

2. Improved data quality and accessibility – Data breadth vs Data Depth

Authored by, David Christiansen,  Director, Sales and Marketing at ACP Solutions

As sales people, we are always after a sale made easier by a higher close probability and a shortened sales cycle. Sounds easy enough. Target the right person or people within your ideal customer profile and bang – they are ready to buy and they’ll pay what you propose. Wish it was that simple right? How do I get my hands on a list that has the right coverage with the right data elements which can then be fed to my SDR’s or even better, my CRM to support my pipeline requirements to cover 4X quota?

These questions have been the challenge for data sellers for years and where they choose to invest their resources in data build with breadth or depth continues to provide headaches for all sides. Do I buy the data set that has the coverage I am after or do I buy the smaller data set that has the data elements or data depth that I value?

For years this was a challenge I had in my role as a Director responsible for marketing data at a firm recognised as having the best data quality and data coverage in Australia. Building and maintaining data hygiene with the right elements, containing the right insights with high quality analytics appended is so expensive especially when these records may not be ordered by the clients I rely on to help me build them. How to price is them is a whole other discussion altogether.

We know that certain data elements in a business record do not change as often as other data elements. Addresses, company names, Chief Executive name and even their email address is pretty much publicly available. Additionally, these people are marketed to constantly and have filters protecting them against salespeople like us to stop them being bombarded.

Each person on earth will generate an average of about 1.7 MB of data per second. Daily smartphone and computer usage means that the volume of data is expanding rapidly. The average user shares dozens of media links daily, and all of that has to be stored somewhere. There is too much data to manage if you don’t have a plan to consume it.

How Can Sales Leaders Can Do It Better? 

1. Choose data depth and recency over data breadth.
2. Analytics, insights, and automation augment your ability, they don’t replace you.
3. Recognise the value of YOUR time and talent. Be smart with how you use data.
4. We all have a part to play building data and making it actionable.

1. Flexibility with customers – how flexible are your team?

Authored by, Charmaine Keegan, Sales and Mindset Training Specialist of Smarter Selling

Flexibility with customers is going to be the top skill required during 2021. This is going to the pivotal difference between winning a piece of business – or not.

Flexibility with customers, what does that even mean? It means you are engaging with your customers in a way that suits them, and not dictated by what suits you.

Many salespeople have ‘their way’ (their default if you will) of how they interact and engage with clients.  COVID saw many face-to-face reps unravel when they couldn’t conduct business in their ‘normal’ way. 

Their challenges were suddenly building up – the customer won’t return my call, I can’t see their reactions, they can’t see me, they don’t want to jump onto zoom etc.

Quite simply they have never had to exercise the prescribed skills. They are not used to being flexible.

Yet others embraced the opportunity to increase and enhance their skills, recognising that adopting different approaches was going to better their position.

This realisation that customers need us to work with them in different ways, and our need to be flexible, starts with that very first interaction when you are trying to convert them into a customer.

Learning how to handle clients preferring, for example, to only communicate through live chat or email, we as salespeople need to be able to foremost accept (not begrudge) these different communication methods to then be highly skilled in handling multiple ways of engaging, so that we are able to form a relationship, get the intel required, position ourselves as the trusted advisor and then put forward a compelling reason for that client to buy into us and ultimately get positive results.

What can a leader do to help their team be more flexible?

As a leader you can drive this by essentially being flexible yourself. Not complaining when a client asks to email rather than speak on the phone.  Adjusting positively to the ‘new normal’ (you over that term yet?).  Getting your team highly skilled on live chat, how to handle enquires exclusively through email. How to be polished on video conferencing. How to be resilient and adaptable and of course, arming them on how to professionally give the client a reason as to why jumping on a VC or seeing you face-to-face will be of benefit to them – but never assuming that that is the only way to communicate.

Flexibility in sales means acquiring a sophisticated, intelligent approach where you adjust your method to suit the client, and at all times, regardless of how you are engaging with them, you position yourself as the trusted advisor and solution provider.  It’s about being open to adjusting your approach, style and manner befitting to your client.

We call it ‘the dance’ i.e. You shouldn’t be forcing the client into dancing your way but adjust your footwork to match theirs. After all, our jobs as salespeople is to make the interaction seamless and easy – make it easy for the client to buy of you.

Keep up that fancy footwork.

Publisher’s note – I thank Jo Schonheim, Bill Beedie, David Christiansen and Charmaine Keegan for sharing their views and I encourage you to connect with them on LinkedIn.

Disclaimer – you can download the State of Sales report as it details drivers for business growth and resilience based on statistical feedback from thousands of sales professionals who will encounter many of the same challenges as your organisation.

This article is not a sponsored post and has been written independently of commercial influence. Head Of Sales is funded by advertising from many organisations including Salesforce.

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Working through this pandemic has brought many different challenges for all types of businesses, and COVID-19 presented us with a big decision: do we let things play out and see what happens? Or do we double down and invest in technology?

As a global business who sells products in more than 50 countries, we operate in a B2B, B2C and B2B2C world, so we needed to ensure our sales channels were still able to work as best as they could.

We asked the question internally: “In 12 or 18 months, are we going to regret investing in technology now?”. No one could say “no”.

There were some things that we already knew we needed to do. Straight away, we brought forward the technological investment that was already on our roadmap. Since then it feels like we’ve done at least two years of work in the past six months, but it’s been worth it.

Under our new CEO and the executive team, we’ve been focusing very heavily on internal communication and transparency to make sure our shared purpose, vision and strategy have cascaded through the company and permeate everything we do at every level.

This culture enabled us to quickly take action and helped power the changes we made to the way we connected with all of our partners and customers.

Reimagining the sales process

As you’d expect during this global pandemic, we’ve had to rethink our approach to sales. And as a global business, that looked different in each region.

Parts of North America have essentially been in lockdown since March; in New Zealand we had very swift lockdowns, but were back in action relatively quickly. So we’ve had to tailor our approach based on what’s happening in the region.

Across the world, though, retailers’ ability to sell to the customer was taken away overnight. This meant we had to change how we supported them – and change that quickly.

The most significant change, of course, was for those who usually operate from a storefront. If you don’t have a store, how do you keep on selling?

The immediate things we focused on were perhaps the obvious. Were our products on their website? Did they have the right content to support those products? And this, all of a sudden, leads into how can we keep training your staff?

It was important they understood the principles of B2C commerce, so when they’re engaging a customer whose only access to the store is now via a website, they can have the right conversations.

The key thing to note, however, is that we didn’t turn to a direct sales approach – we weren’t cold calling or putting the hard sell on. We said to everyone selling: “we want you to keep engaging with customers in exactly the same way. The only thing that’s changed is the medium – you’re online, not face-to-face”.

The fundamentals are very similar.

Out with the hard sell, in with the gentle touch

From the outset of the pandemic, we decided to change the way we marketed and to take the focus away from the product.

We didn’t think it was right to deliberately promote our brand, so we decided to engage with customers on a much more human level. There was so much information about coronavirus and the economy, and it was all doom and gloom. We just wanted to add something positive – a distraction to lighten the mood and help people.

We started to communicate with customers about things that could improve their lives a little – especially given they were going to be spending more time at home.

We ran a series of ‘life hacks’ on timely topics, like ’how can I make my food last longer in my refrigerator?’ or ‘how do I use my dishwasher better?’, and ‘how do I make a cake for someone who’s allergic to flour?’. We just wanted to stay connected with our customers and continue to find new ways to add something of value.

Fast-tracking tech implementation

To keep the business and our channels to market working as well as they could given the new circumstances, we quickly moved all of our websites – across all of our brands and countries – onto Salesforce Commerce Cloud.

The first step was to home in on the user experience. The second step was to support our trade customers by continuing to build out our trade portal, which is built on Community Cloud, and getting that into the hands of more customers.

The third step, which was critical, was putting in place the internal tools of enablement – making sure employees had the right tools at their fingertips.

We did a lot of work in Service Cloud; we enabled Facebook Messenger as a channel and WhatsApp as a service channel, put the Channel Menu on our website and made sure we had the right touchpoints for everyone to do their jobs as well as they could.

The importance of empowerment and ownership

Of course, we couldn’t do any of this globally without our teams being able to act quickly. This comes down to empowerment and ownership and having the right groups of people focusing on outcomes for customers – again, something that stems from our culture.

Our Australian sales team was focusing on what they needed to do for their B2B and B2C customers; our UK team was focusing on what they needed to do on a direct-to-consumer basis.

Importantly, the teams had to have some autonomy to make decisions and move quickly, which our culture and leadership supported.

The changes we’ve had to make to the way we operate haven’t just been done to deal with the pandemic. They’ve been done for the long term, too.

The vast majority of our activity was on the roadmap for the future. Twelve months ago, I could never have imagined we’d have gotten there so quickly.

Find out how other sales leaders are driving business resilience and growth by downloading the fourth edition of the State of Sales report.

Hear more about how Fisher & Paykel redefined its global sales approach in our on-demand webinar Unpacking the State of Sales: What are the next steps for sales leaders? Hear from the best in the business, including sales expert Tony Hughes and Salesforce ANZ Chief Commercial Officer Ian McAdam.

Read more from Salesforce:

Six Traits Of Great Sales Reps

It’s time for sales leaders to rethink how they lead

Introducing the 50 Pro Sales Tips for 2020 eBook

The post How Fisher & Paykel Redefined Its Approach To Sales appeared first on Head Of Sales.

Building a great sales team and culture is not an easy task. For starters, everyone is selling themselves when they go into a job interview and salespeople are no exception. And with terms like “tenacious”, “a way with people”, “a drive to exceed goals” as standard buzzwords in sales recruitment ads, you’re likely to be interviewing similar candidates. So how do you identify the good from the great?

Everyone is time-poor, but sales managers and leaders cannot afford to skimp on hiring great talent when it comes to sales. That’s why we put together 50 Pro Sales Tips for 2020, an ebook full of valuable advice from sales culture to self-improvement and working with others, to lead generation and negotiation skills. Because it’s time to look past the buzzwords and down into what skills are really behind the best sales reps. And the very best way to understand that is from the experience and expertise of other sales professionals.

Use these insights as you develop your job description, hire and coach the reps on your team.

Know your customer inside out

All good sales reps know their product, but the best ones know their customer even better. They put themselves in the shoes of their target market to build trust and ongoing loyalty.

According to Aaron Tobone, Chief Information Officer at Provider Assist, a good sales rep understands the importance of timing and context to build a customer relationship.

“Be proactive in understanding what is happening in your customer’s business so you can have contextual conversations and provide valuable advice. This is how you build continued trust,” says Aaron.

Building on the facts

Just like you can’t build a home with weak foundations, you shouldn’t build a relationship with flimsy data.

A lot of sales reps will talk about opportunities and forecasting deals without a lot of hard facts to support them. The best salespeople, however, start with the facts and develop a strategy from there.

“When selling, customers want to see results you have achieved for relevant businesses. Always start with the facts, make sure you backup your stories with hard data,” says Nick Hultink, Sales Director, Commercial at Salesforce.

These reps usually input lots of data into a CRM like Sales Cloud, they don’t just look narrowly within the data, either, but try to find patterns across multiple accounts.

Not confined to silos

With 78% of customers expecting consistent interactions across departments, a good sales rep will break down silos between teams. They will also take the time to initiate a constructive discussion about lead scoring and qualification to improve the entire sales process. After all these, teams are working towards the same goal.

“If your marketing and sales teams are not aligned it can impact your ability to find prospects and convert them into customers. If you have a marketing team that is feeding leads from campaigns to your sales team, you have ‘warm’ leads ready to be nurtured,” says Josh Harding, Head of Client Sales, Criterion Conferences.

This kind of cross-functional thinking applies to other areas of the business too. Sales reps that see the benefits of communicating with marketing, service and even finance teams, to find mutually beneficial outcomes are the sales reps you want to invest in.

Technologically literate

Salespeople like to move at pace, so most don’t want to be bogged down by unoptimised spreadsheets and administration. When interviewing your next sales rep, get a sense of the tools and technologies they use to get a deeper understanding of their customer.

A sales rep that embraces and understands the benefits of artificial intelligence technologies is an empowered sales rep. AI can streamline work and help reps make smarter decisions, particularly around customer behaviour predictions.

Can work on the fly

Recent events have shown the positives of staff being able to work from anywhere. And while sales reps may be virtual sellers for now, when they return to face-to-face selling you want a sales rep who can optimise their time when they’re out and about.

There are an abundance of apps available for sales teams to turn their phones into an indispensable sales tool. Good use of business apps can help reps act with urgency to whatever their customers and employers need.

Look for someone who loves learning

“A rut is a coffin with both ends kicked out”, says Marcus Cauchi Fism, Channel/Enterprise Sales Expert at Sandler Training UK.

Great salespeople will take the lead on their professional development by looking for insights from anyone. Be that from their managers, peers, and even their customers.

“What worked 10 years ago might not be what works today. Read, watch, listen every day. Study sales like any other profession to stay current,” says Marcus.

On top of learning, a good sales rep will constantly evaluate themselves to ensure they’re improving and moving forward. There should be a sense of fulfilment from learning something new just as there is from crushing a sales quota.

While not every sales rep you hire will have all the skills listed, recognising their ability to build these skills is what will set a good sales rep and an eventual great sales rep apart in an interview. And they’re the sales rep you should aim to hire for your team.

Find more ways to build the best sales team with our 50 Pro Sales Tips for 2020 ebook.

Read more from Salesforce:

It’s time for sales leaders to rethink how they lead

Introducing the 50 Pro Sales Tips for 2020 eBook

The post Six Traits Of Great Sales Reps appeared first on Head Of Sales.

The following ten laws must be observed.

1. Gather all necessary intelligence before formulating strategy. 

Never act without thinking and assessing all of the available accurate information. A strategy is only as good as the information that leads to it. Being an excellent climber is of no benefit if your ladder is leaning against the wrong wall. Social research tools such as Linked are essential.

2. Be first and set the agenda. 

Being strategic is best achieved by arriving first and setting the agenda with senior stakeholders. Truly understand the organisational dynamics and winning agendas aligned to the biggest problems or opportunities. Influence the requirements toward your own unique value and set an agenda that disadvantages the competition. Focus on helping them define the very value you bring and set an agenda around the importance of managing risk.

3. Start high in the account and be a domain expert business person. 

You will always be delegated to people you sound like. Be a business person rather than a sales person by discussing their industry and business challenges and opportunities. Ensure your LinkedIn profile supports this and be equipped to discuss how your have helped others to overcome similar challenges or realize significant opportunities. Have proof of your claims. Avoid discussing features and functions of products, services or solutions.

4. Find and influence the ‘puppet master’. 

This will be a senior person in the background who seeks to avoid meeting with sales people. They will only engage if they believe you have gravitas, relevant insight and genuine value. Initial influence or establishing credibility can often be achieved indirectly through third-parties, and this is why your LinkedIn credentials and network are so important.

5. Understand the informal power-base and politics. 

The organisational chart can be misleading and it is essential to understand the power-base and influence-dynamics that transcend the visible structure. Relationship mapping is an essential part of opportunity and account planning… you cannot formulate effective strategy or align with the ‘power players’ without it.

6. Align to serious problems, significant opportunities and winning agendas. 

The only person who can call it a solution is the customer. Problem solving must occur before solution selling, and the size of the customer’s purchase order is directly linked to the size of the problem being solved or the opportunity being addressed. Understand the business-case and real value of investing in your product, service or solution. Only the customer can quantify the value.

7. Think before acting and be patient and strategic. 

Tactical mistakes can usually be recovered but strategic errors are often fatal. Never be afraid of waiting and always be willing to invest in gathering additional information. Do not confuse laziness, inaction or procrastination with being strategically patient. Be humble and seek advice while thinking through the potential consequences of actions. Only birds are good at ‘winging it’.

8. Identify and manage risk. 

Bad news early is good news. Risk resides in what you cannot control and especially from ignorance. In the software industry risk resides in demonstrations and ‘reference sites’. Across all industries, risk also resides in people and competitors. Anyone on your team afflicted by arrogance or an inability to listen and be briefed represents enormous risk. Beware therefore of your own executives who seek to interact with your prospect because they can easily say something damaging or introduce unwanted information. Existing customers are the greatest potential sales resource if they act as positive references but they can easily be a liability in highlighting your deficiencies and this is often the case the lower you interact in an organisation.

9. Anticipate competitor moves and set traps. 

Know your competition and their methods of operation so that you can constantly change the rules. Do not allow them to use your weaknesses against you. Instead set traps for them and ensure you have set an agenda focused on your unique value. Ensure the customer publicizes your winning selection early and widely therefore making it difficult for competitors to interfere once they deduce they’ve lost.

10. Confidence is the paradise of fools. 

Confidence is usually the feeling you have before you understand the situation. Avoid arrogance and complacency. Be positively paranoid (competitively aware) yet not defensive or cynical. Take nothing for granted and validate any assumptions. Respect the customer and their power of choice at all times. Never underestimate the competition or the way in which circumstances can alter through changes in personnel, market conditions, acquisitions, and myriad other factors.

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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.

How can we build effective sales teams for the short and long term?

This is the perennial question that has been asked by sales managers and business leaders for years.

The simple answer is bit by bit, over time by investing wisely in the right things.

Warren Buffett knows a thing or two about investing and his insights and wise counsel hold very true for building highly effective sales teams. Here are some of his famous quotes and how we see them in relation to building sales teams:

1. There are no bonus points for complicated investments. The truly big investment idea can usually be explained in a short paragraph.*
   • This is true for a great sales strategy. A sales strategy should be easily understood by the sales team and the whole business and be expressed in simple language. It should clearly state the purpose of the business and its sales team including which markets we are focusing on; the way we are going to go to market and what values and governance we will stand to when engaging our clients and team members. Go ahead and write a simple paragraph describing your Sales Strategy. Could your sales team follow it easily?
   • We have to stop over-complicating sales teams with the obsessive focus on reporting on the numbers and results only (forecasting, pipeline, big data, results, etc.) at the expense of actually working with our sales teams to get them selling better. You cannot coach results, you can only coach activities. We need to invest in the front end getting salespeople to sell better and then the results will come.
   • Instead of lumping all clients in one massive go-to-market plan we could instead practice micro-segmentation and equip and direct our sales teams about who they need to specifically sell to and why. Result? More targeted sales activities, client conversations, better sales results and happier clients.
     
     
2. Buy businesses that can be run by idiots. I try to buy stock in businesses that are so wonderful that an idiot can run them. Because sooner or later, one will.
   • We need to stop relying on silver bullet point solutions to run sales teams and operations and start putting in place well-prepared sales operations frameworks and good sales strategies that allow anyone stepping into our sales world to have the best chance of getting out there and selling effectively.
   • We need to take sales management much more seriously and start to properly train and equip sales managers to be effective sales leaders. Equipping them with the right resources to make sound decisions around sales strategy, market segmentation, account mapping, sales financials, people selection and development, how they lead and deploy their sales teams, and how they work with the executive team ensuring understanding and respect for the sales function in all its complexity. At Barrett, we truly understand and appreciate that sales operations are complex systems and we can help people manage that complexity so that everyone can operate in the light and make informed decisions about what to do instead of relying on gut feel and guesses.
     
     
3. Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.

Developing an effective sales team takes time, dedication, leadership and courage in the face of short-termism and fads. For instance, implementing a 70:20:10 framework that creates a Perpetual Learning Culture leads to increased sales results, better margins, happier clients and accomplished salespeople, and a marked competitive edge.

4. Bad things aren’t obvious when times are good. After all, you only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out.

How many businesses and their sales teams have been caught short by the GFC and the many changes in the market place since? Too many. Why? Because too many were not geared for customer centricity still focused on themselves, and they did not look ahead at what was changing, nor did they really listen to their clients and what they were wanting. The result? Too many businesses and their sales teams are in a ‘pricing=race-to-the-bottom’ syndrome because they do not know how to sell value instead of product, amongst other things.

So, to get things going and make sure you are on the right track, here is our sales operations checklist. Do you have the following in place?

1. Sales strategy, the right market segments supported by the right sales messaging, go-to-market action plan
2. The right sales structure with clear levels of accountability including standards of behaviour and values so we know what we need to do to deliver better sales results
3. The right sales processes in place that can be easily taught and applied in the real world
4. User-friendly technology that helps us to sell and not tie us up in excessive administration
5. Effective sales managers who lead, coach and support us instead of selling for us
6. A continuous learning environment that encourages regular reflection and practice and keeps us up-to-date and fit for purpose

*‘Our investments continue to be few in number and simple in concept: The truly big investment idea can usually be explained in a short paragraph. We like a business with enduring competitive advantages that are run by able and owner-oriented people. When these attributes exist, and when we can make purchases at sensible prices, it is hard to go wrong (a challenge we periodically manage to overcome). Investors should remember that their scorecard is not computed using Olympic-diving methods: Degree-of-difficulty doesn’t count. If you are right about a business whole value is largely dependent on a single key factor that is both easy to understand and enduring, the payoff is the same as if you had correctly analysed an investment alternative characterised by many constantly shifting and complex variables.’

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