Attributes of Consultative Solution Sales

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As we are onboarding some interns with a sales-focused role in a few weeks, we kicked off discussions about what sales and marketing are all about.  For people new to sales, it can be a bit confusing and there remains a range of perceptions about sales and the value of sales – from  “used car salesman” analogies, to the highly professional sales leader.

There are many personal attributes of effective solution sales that are rooted in the DNA of the individual – like empathy, patience, intelligence, listening, questioning, sense of humor, ability to articulate ideas, being likable. This post is focused more on consultative solution sales  – selling a complex, often intangible, product or service to discerning buyers and often, complex organizations. Solution sales requires an approach centered on the client or customer. This sounds obvious, but is often forgotten.

Trends are changing the role of sales.

  • Buyers are using the web, mobile and social to self educate and they are often far more knowledgeable by the time they engage with sales
  • There is a bigger role for marketing now because the web plays a much bigger role in the sales value chain including inbound lead generation
  • Leading companies are aligning the processes of marketing and sales end-to-end recognizing the importance of a collaborative effort

While inbound is increasingly important, there is still a critical role for outbound prospecting and sales. More leads are generated from inbound marketing with valued content and lead gen tools, but sales must qualify and manage these leads while also developing prospects using more traditional outbound strategies.

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Boost Performance with Sales Incentives

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When sales and marketing work together harmoniously, all is well. Marketing builds the brand and drums up leads; sales reels them in and brings them home as paying customers. Yet we know. particularly for sales, that sales incentives are the critical driver for performance focus. With today’s more unified revenue value chain and closed-loop across marketing and sales, you may need to realign your incentive programs to drive alignment and focus on the behaviors and results you seek. Programs need to fit in with your revenue operating model and reinforce team revenue performance.

Motivate Success

handshakeIncentive systems can motivate the right behaviors and align activities across marketing and sales. The incentive model should be transparent and readily understandable while clearly motivating your teams to perform in accordance with the prevailing company revenue strategy. Incentives can be a highly effective way to encourage and motivate, build morale and drive desired behavior. A study called Incentives, Motivation and Workplace Performance showed that a stunning 92% of respondents cited incentives as the top reason they achieved a workplace goal. Incentives can have particularly big impact when the sales and marketing teams devise a program together to effectively drive sales team behavior.

The best, most effective incentive programs are SMART.

  • Specific – target a specific area for improvement.
  • Measurable – quantify or at least suggest an indicator of progress.
  • Assignable – specify who will do it.
  • Realistic – state what results can realistically be achieved, given available resources.
  • Time-related – specify when the result(s) can be achieved.

 

Begin by identifying your specific and measurable performance goals. Ask focused questions:

  • What exact targets and changes do we want to accomplish?
  • What behaviors would we like to reinforce?
  • How will we measure and track success?
  • How will the incentive campaign be implemented and promoted?

Once you’ve defined core metrics of success and created an incentive program that’s right for your team, there are some additional things you should keep in mind:

Stretch targets. Incent based upon new, desired behavior, e.g. meeting a higher quota, selling a new product, etc. Rewarding existing quotas and behaviors won’t likely enhance productivity.

Find the sweet spot. Don’t set your incentive payout too high, or the sales team will neglect their core responsibilities to focus only on the prize. Conversely, the payout should not be so too low that it doesn’t drive interest. Find the measurable incentive payout “sweet spot” that truly motivates your employees.

Public recognition. Public recognition helps to affirm good behavior, boost morale and foster a sense of friendly competition among the staff by celebrating the successes.

Keep campaign awareness fresh. Send regular reminders to the staff that the incentive is in place.

Choose a long enough timeframe. Consider running your incentive program for a substantial amount of time, not just a month or a quarter. Studies show programs that run for at least a year generate a 44% increase in performance, while programs running for a week or less boost performance by just 20%.

Measure and Track ROI. Establish baseline measurements at the beginning of your campaign so that you can track results and successes back to actual sales.

Promote team spirit.  Team-oriented incentive programs generate a performance increase of around 45% compared with incentive programs geared toward individuals, which yield just a 27% increase. However, both approaches can have a motivating effect, and it doesn’t have to be an either-or decision; experiment with different programs and see what your staff responds to the most.

Good luck and good selling! Are you looking to enhance revenue performance?  Sign up for a revenue diagnostic using our 50-dimension model.

 

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Use Pricing Strategies for Maximizing Revenue and Profit

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Best Price

Companies take a number of different approaches to establishing their pricing , but many wrongly assume that they have limited control on revenue and margin by using more effective pricing strategies. Businesses can implement different pricing strategies and tactics to maximize revenue and margin. Depending on the pricing models and business-specific circumstances, it may take some time to find the right balance. The key strategy is to enable your front-line sales team with the tools and insights needed to maintain optimal pricing.

Here are some tactics you might consider.

 

1. Segment Around Buyer Values to Drive Value Pricing

If you’re struggling to get a grip on your customers’ buyer values, you aren’t alone. Buyer values can fluctuate based on the market competition, market sensitivity to pricing, and other challenges. For companies that serve diversified markets, a one-size-fits-all approach can leave revenue opportunities untapped. Segmentation around buyer business impact and value offers the flexibility to manage pricing differently across different segments, adjusting for those markets where the underlying business value justifies premium pricing. When managed effectively, segmentation strategies can produce margin increases of 10 points, and sometimes more.

2. Pricing Decision Support

Sales representatives have a significant influence on revenue margin. In many cases, sales professionals might be pursuing volume over margin, and with poor pricing tools at their disposal, they likely give away revenue margin needlessly when adjustments to their discounting and other pricing actions might give them better guidance. Getting this right leads to improved margins for the sales reps as well as the business. Companies should be on the lookout for tools and resources that can help sales reps handle these pricing considerations.

3. Allocate Resources Towards Higher Margin Opportunities

Profit is always welcome of course, but some sales efforts will prove to be much more profitable to a company than others. Those marginally profitable segments may be turning over a net gain, but their consumption of resources could be taking away from other opportunities that offer greater pricing power and are even more profitable. Businesses should stratify their various segments by profitability and allocate resources to the most attractive segments.

4. Assess and Adapt

With these strategies in place, use observation and analysis to evaluate the success of new pricing strategies. By closely observing the effects, you will gain insights into what’s impacting revenue and margin performance and you can fine tune your strategies.

Ultimately, the market will be the main driver in determining pricing, yet leaders are recognizing the importance of using value-based segmentation, market research and decision support to inform and enable their pricing strategies.  Contact us if you need help in maximizing pricing impact.

 

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Pipedrive Review – A CRM That Works With You

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There are an incredible number of CRM Apps out there. I have looked at several and wanted to mention Pipedrive as a great option for companies looking to focus on sales. It does a great job at pipeline management – with a nimble sales ready focus and good integrations using Zapier.

Companies like it because:

Pipedrive

1. The visual pipeline is powerful. The pipeline view is fantastic- visual drag and drop pipeline

2. Sales always needs an orchestrated next step. You can easily set that up and when an action is completed, it prompts you for the next step.

3. Managing contacts and companies is always a difficult challenge. the contact and company data management and synchronization is easy and tailored.

4. You need to track pipeline health and hygiene performance to meet goals. You can set up pipeline velocity metrics and track performance

5. Most CRMs are so cumbersome, they don’t get used. Pipedrive is built for the sales person.

6. If you are an Apps user, this is a no brainer. Pipedrive syncs with Google Apps.

7. Not expensive.

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What is Your Model Week? – Advisors and Professionals Need a Plan

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Yesterday, I had an in depth session with a leading Boston area financial advisor. Their firm has doubled every five years and they have plans to double again in the next five years. In the past, their growth has been on the back of solid personal business development activities by the two partners along with timely, yet somewhat ad hoc referrals. To achieve the next level of growth (from $300M to $600M AUM) they understand that they need a more systematic marketing and selling engine. But what should they do differently?

The challenge is that, along with growth comes increased business and operational complexity which takes up more senior team time. The senior team is saddled with business responsibilities and are not able to fully engage the market as intensely as they did in the early growth years.  At the same time, it is the senior team that is most critical to selling success. So, what is the answer?

Image via: onthefly.onemillionskates.com

Part of a good solution is to develop a ‘Model Week’ for each member of the business development team. The model week articulates the level of selling activity that is both critical and realistic in a given week – balancing much needed personal time with the needs of the business and the sales engagement process. The elements that should go into a model week can be derived by building a revenue model. Here are some considerations:

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The New LinkedIn Contacts: Another Tool for 1:1 Engagement

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LinkedIn Contacts

We have written several posts over the last few years on 1:1 engagement. We highlighted tools like XOBNI (for Outlook), Social CRM tools, and more recently Cloze and Newsie and even Plaxo to name a few. Now LinkedIn’s new LinkedIn Contacts is another powerful tool you can use.

LinkedIn Contacts is based on the Connected technology, the content management startup LinkedIn acquired in 2011.

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Behind The Ropes at Augusta National and The Masters

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The Masters Augusta National Green Jacket

The Green Jacket. Source Golf Digest

For golfers, particularly in the northern and colder climates, this is a great time time of year. We immerse ourselves in the Masters experience. Non-golfing friends and partners hear The Golf Channel in the background and before long, they get to know the players and the shot strategies though subconscious listening.

As I look ahead to the weekend  – and in particular to the last 9 on Sunday (the best 3 hours in sports), I also think of the how incredible it is that Augusta National has created such a powerful and unique brand. Even Bubba Watson was brought to tears yesterday when talking about the importance of the “green Jacket”  There are lessons in here for any business and particularly for those offering a professional service experience.

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Don’t Forget Outbound Sales and Referral Marketing

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With all the focus on digital and inbound marketing, many of our clients look for ambitious results from their inbound marketing programs – and they should!

Over time, as reputation and ‘Klout’ builds with effective social engagement and content marketing, the inbound machine will pay off. However, an effective revenue strategy involves more than inbound marketing – especially for complex and considered sales and higher-end professional services.  Inbound marketing is critical, but smarter outbound selling strategies, in most cases, will continue to drive the largest share of revenue performance.

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Salesforce and Act-On Integration

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By: John Nielsen

 

Although it is a tedious undertaking, it is important to integrate your Act-On Software account with your Salesforce account.  Having a seamless flow of information between databases prevents dated information from reaching your sales team; that is if you set it up correctly.

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Cirrus Insight -> Salesforce -> Gmail: Nice Integration

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There are a range of terrific CRM solutions out there and we have tried several for both client installations and our own team’s use. We settled on Salesforce.com based on the richness of functionality, the level of demand we see with our own clients and some excellent integration opportunities.

In addition to integrating fully with our marketing automation solution to pass through inbound marketing leads and see lead scoring, we have implemented Cirrus Insight as a browser widget for contextual integration with Gmail. We like Cirrus a lot, though until recently, we were a little bit frustrated by how it co-exised with Rapportive – another fantastic solution recently acquired by LinkedIn. That problem has now been solved!!

Check Out Cirrus Here! (this is an affiliate link which would earn us some brownie points with Cirrus and you might get a discount!)

 

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