Let’s face it, customers really hate us.  They will tolerate our marketing content—as long as it isn’t too promotional—just the facts please.  Sales people, well that’s another story, we’re really a total waste of their time, unless the are looking for lunch or a golf game.  With the exception of the lunch and golf game, the web now can solve virtually all our customer problems.  Customers can find peers, other people who have the same interests, concerns, problems.  “Trusted sources,” that can provide much” higher quality information and insight” about vendor products than the we can.  Our role as suppliers is now to sit politely by the phone, wait for it to ring, then answer any remaining specific questions the customer may have, process their order (if we are fortunate enough to be the supplier selected), smile and thank them for their business.

Our buyers are so fortunate.  We know all that information is totally accurate.  We know those users or people who have experience know everything there is to know about our products and services, and how they apply specifically to the problems other companies have.  We know these are totally without agenda (or even being compensated).

We also know that our customers know exactly what they are looking for.  We know they have all the right questions and just need answers.  We know they know how to solve their problems, so they are just looking for data and information.  We know they have the time, ability, and judgement to invest in searching the web, engage in conversations with people they have never met, talk about their proprietary information and problems.  Imagine a web based conversation, “Our manufacturing process really sucks, we have too much scrap, bad quality, and poor customer satisfaction and are looking to reduce those problems…in your experience, what are the best solutions to that?”  Or “Our financial systems are a mess, we can’t close our books, we don’t know if we are properly reporting our results, if we are in compliance with government regulations…. what have you done to solve that problem?”

Yes the web is the answer to our customer prayers.  We need to transform our organizations to better serve our customers and to more effectively process those orders.  We need to spend more time encouraging our current customers to spend less time doing their jobs and more time participating in web based forums, maybe we can even provide them some copy they can use in their discussions.  (Perhaps this is the role for all the displaced marketing and sales people).

Frankly, I am getting PISSED OFF with all the apologists for sales and marketing.  I’m angry with all those naive enough to think that marketing and sales can bring no value or insight to our customers and they should be displaced by web based forums.  Finally, I am terrified for our customers who may not even recognize they have a problem or may be so busy just surviving they can’t spend the time solving their problems.

Sure, we deserve much of the criticism that is leveled at marketing and sales.  Every day, we are bombarded with an ever escalating volume of messages, promotional content, and stupid sales pitches.  Too many organizations seem to see the solution to this move to the web is to turn up the volume.  This only serves to piss customers off, rather than turning up the volume, we need to turn up the quality and customer experience.

If we can’t turn up the quality of the customer engagement, if we can turn up the quality of the customer experience, if we cannot offer real insight and value to our customers, then the web is probably the best solution.

But I think too much of our customers to succumb to that.  I think too much of our companies and shareholders to to succumb to this.  I think too much of the value we as sales and marketing professionals can offer to succumb to that.  We have to change and we are changing.  We have a huge amount to offer to our customer and can create real value.  We can provide our customers insight they can’t get anywhere else.  We walk the halls, visit the plants, talk to lots of people in our customers.  We see new possibilities, we see opportunities to help them grow and improve.  We can offer help and advice, we can create real meaning in helping them outPerform their competitors and better serving their customers.

If we aren’t prepared to change, we deserve what we get — but that’s always been true, the web hasn’t changed any of that.

Let’s stop apologizing for our professions, let’s not abandon our responsibilities to our customers, our companies, and ourselves to create great value.  It’s not time to give up, it’s time to get more aggressive in the changes we have to make in ourselves and how we engage our customers.

Mid-year is approaching.  I’m talking to a lot of people about where they are with quota performance.  With too many, their hands start waving around, the stories start, the excuses start.

“We’re still seeing the effects of the economy, customers aren’t buying….”  I know their peers in the same company are making the numbers, their competitors are selling, so I wonder.

“Our marketing programs and collateral are really insufficient, I don’t have the tools I need to be successful…”  Again, there are a number of their peers faced with the same thing who don’t let this stop them.

“”We just don’t have enough leads….”  I’ve never met a salesperson that has enough leads, so I wonder, what’s stopping them from prospecting.

“The dog ate my sales call plan…….”

I may be a little hardnosed about this, but there is only one thing sacrosanct in sales, it’s The Number.  Our job, our responsibility, our obligation to our companies is to do everything possible to make our number.  There are simply no excuses.

Everything else about sales is changeable, but we can’t change our obligation to make the number.

If we don’t have enough leads, then we have to do something.  Can we get referrals, can we go back to past customers to see if they have a need?  How do we start prospecting to find new opportunities?

If our customers aren’t buying, how do we find those that are?  Can we create a different or more compelling value proposition.  How do we find those customers that are buying?  Let’s invest our time in those that are.

We don’t have the right materials and collateral—-well create it yourself!  Never let materials, tools, collateral stop you.

There are simply no excuses to do everything you possibly can do to make your number!

Does this mean you’ll be successful?  Well you won’t be successful if you don’t, that’s virtually guaranteed.  But doing everything you possibly can may still mean you don’t make the number.  But at least you have learned, you have solid data about why and you can leverage that data to improve.

Sales success is about leaving no stone unturned.  It’s about figuring out what it tales to win and owning the responsibility for that.  It’s about determination–not letting anything to keep you from achieving your goals. Sometimes it means we have to change our approaches.  What has worked in the past may not be successful, so we have to figure out what creates success.  We may have to develop new skills, we may have to change our process, we may have to go after different customers, we may have to be clearer about our value proposition.  Everything in sales is open to change—except for making the number.

Are you prepared to change everything to achieve your goals?  Are you totally committed to achieving them and will let nothing stand in your way?

Every year, I sit through hundreds of deal reviews.  They all seem to go the same way.  The sales person talks about the deal, the competition, what the sales person or team has done.  Too often, too much time is spent reviewing and discussing past history.  However, at some point in the review, the discussion shifts to, “What do we do next?”

Often, there’s a bit of an uncomfortable silence.  Then a lot of random ideas start surfacing, “We should probably meet with…..,”  “Maybe we should do this……, “  “Let’s do a demo…..,” “Let’s have one of our executives call on them…..,” “What if we tried this…..”

I’m always struck by the seeming randomness of the discussion.  Lots of brainstorming, lots of (and some very good) ideas, but they sometimes seem unfocused or like we are grasping at straws struggling to identify the critical next steps in improving our positioning, and moving to winning a deal.

There’s simply no reason for this.  There’s no reason to be guessing, there’s no reason for the randomness in thinking.  The next steps must always be purposeful and have a strong direction.  They must be based on our experience in winning deals, knowing what’s most effective in producing results, and how we win.

Guess what, the tool that we use to do this, executing our best practices consistently is the Sales Process.  The sales process provides direction and context to our discussion on what’s next.  While the specifics will vary deal by deal, the Sales Process provides a structure and framework that’s based on our best practices and knowledge of what wins.

The conversations that are random brainstorming sessions, the confused discussions about what to do next are the result of not having a Sales Process–or not using it.  In the absence of a sales process, we have to “invent” a way to win each time every time.  We have to invent it continuously as the customer executes their buying process.  We aren’t leveraging our experience of what it takes to win, so we put our ability to win at greater risk.

One of the best things about a Sales Process is it provides a structure and a framework that helps us win!  It helps us understand what it takes to win and provides us a starting point to answer the question, “What do we do next?”  Why not focus the next steps based on what we know causes us to win, rather than guessing?  Why not use the process as the starting point to identifying specifically what advances us–yest we have to adjust what we do to the specifics of the situation, but we do in a structured, efficient and effective context.

I don’t know about you, but somehow winning–and winning fast is important to me.  I can’t imagine having to guess.  I can’t imagine putting my ability to win at risk–in fact I want to minimize that risk.  I can’t imagine not leveraging our best practices to give me direction and insight into what to do next.  I can’t imagine not leveraging the Sales Process for it’s maximum impact.

Are you comfortable with guessing and putting your ability to win at risk?  If you are, then you don’t need a Sales Process.  If not, then the answer should be clear.

My colleague Anthony Iannarino wrote an outstanding post:   “Mismatched Skills And Value Creation.”  Usually, Anthony and I are so aligned in our thinking that we tend to complete each other’s sentences.  But I had to disagree with part of his post, it was the perspective he presented on Commodity Buyers.

Virtually every product and service, at some time in it’s life cycle moves to commoditization.  As differences between offerings become smaller; as buyer familiarity with the products, solutions becomes greater; as perceived risks to the purchase decision become much smaller; then there is the potential that our offerings become commoditized.  Given no other differentiation, the only way to win is based on price  — or is it?

Don’t get me wrong, there are people that will always buy on price–regardless of whether our product has significant differentiation or it is a commodity.  Price is important to every decision.

But as sales people, I think it is incumbent on us—both for our success and the customer’s to always focus on value creation and to aggressively seek to create value in every situation. 

Value can be created with commodity buyers–it’s just different than what we may have seen before.  While commodity buyers may be driven by price, they are also seeking other things–they may want to have an easy, painless, hassle free, procurement process.  They may want to look at reducing the overall cost of the transaction–not just the price. 

As an example, a number of years ago, I worked with the Chief Procurement Officer of a very large procurement organization.  They were responsible for procuring everything from basic chemicals, office supplies, “nuts and bolts” (literally), to complex computer systems, communications systems, development tools, machine tools and thousands of other items.  They managed billions of dollars in “spend” every year.  When we started to analyze their procurement processes, we started seeing very surprising data in the “costs of procurement,” or the costs of doing a transaction.  In some cases, the costs of procurement started to approach the purchase value of the items being procured.  Clearly, they had a problem that reducing the price of the commodities they were buying would not solve.

Some of their really smart suppliers recognized this as a problem.  They started working with the customer in seeing how they could reduce the cost of procurement.  Clever vendors realized there was value they could create in helping the customer reduce these costs–while still maintaining superior (but competitive) pricing.

Procurement organizations are very sophisticated–they are shifting to be strategic sourcing organizations.  They realize there is more to “save”  than just on price negotiations.  Supply chain management, vendor managed inventories, contract simplification and management all become critical elements of value that can be created for “commoditized products.”  In their book, Challenger Sale, Dixon and Adamson cite the example of W.W. Grainger challenging their customers on their process of procuring commoditized products. 

There are hundreds of other examples.  Indeed, some of the best thinking of creating value that I have encountered is from organizations who sell commoditized, undifferentiated products.  The sales person who sells carbon black and commands a superior price has to think about value creation differently.  The sales person that sells commoditized electronic components needs to be innovative in how they create value.  Sometimes those of us who sell more “complex or differentiated solutions,” are a little lazy about value creation–we still can rely on the differentiation of our solutions.

As sales people we have to be leaders, for our customers and with our organizations.  We have to constantly focus on value creation–in every sales situation.  Value can be found and created everywhere.  It’s our responsibility–not the customer’s, to create, communicate, and deliver that value.  We cannot succumb to the commiditization of our offerings — even if they are commodities. 

If we allow ourselves to be commoditized, if we allow ourselves to stop searching for and creating value, then we deserve the outcomes we create.

Are you constantly looking to Create Value?

(For extra credit, as you think about this, study and learn about Strategic Sourcing.  Go talk to the top sourcing and procurement executives in your customers and understand what they are trying to achieve.  They are hungry for value, you just have to learn how you can create value for them!)

Recently I was in China in a series of meetings with CEO’s of Chinese companies.  The meetings were great, but we each struggled to maximize their impact.  My Mandarin is very limited–basically to “Hello,”  “Thank you,” and a couple of other words.  Many of the executives spoke some English and were very polite in trying to communicate in a way that I could understand.

Mostly we relied on an interpreter.  The problem was, the interpreter interpreted the discussion–that is he describe things based on how he heard them, not necessarily what was intended.  So we had to be very careful in what we were saying and in verifying that we were aligned in our discussions and what we were trying to achieve.  Fortunately, our shared intention allowed us to be effective in our meetings.

Often, when I go on sales calls with sales people, I think that we are speaking different languages.  The customer is speaking their language, the sales person is speaking their—and there is no interpreter.

Each of organization and industry have their own terminology, jargon, buzzwords, and shorthand.  We have ways of expressing things, that others may not understand.  Too often, I see sales people reeling off terms and acronyms–often to make them sound important, but meaningless to the customer.  Or sales people don’t take the time to understand and communicate in terms that are meaningful to the customer.

A very simple example–many years ago, I managed an organization whose key customer segments were automotive and aerospace design engineers.  Even though the design processes were very similar, the terminology used in each industry were profoundly different.  Automotive engineers tended to talk about “flow lines,”  aerospace engineers tended to talk about “aerodynamics.”  Same concepts, but if we used the term “flow line” with the aerospace guys, we would both lose credibility but we would lose the customer–they wouldn’t understand what we were talking about.

As sales people, we want to maximize our impact on the customer.  We want to make sure our customers understand us and that we understand the customer.  It’s not the customer’s job to speak our language—we have to speak the customer’s language.

This goes beyond the words we and our customers use.  Each industry has key processes, metrics, practices, business drivers.  These are ingrained in everything the customer does.  For us to be impactful, we have to understand all of these, what they mean to the customer and how we can impact them.

Do you understand your customer’s language?

Do you speak the customer’s language?

Do you understand the key metrics, processes, practices, and business drivers for your customer?

A well known saying, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.”  I’d like to add a corollary, “It helps to pay attention to the signposts.”  

Yes, this is a post about establishing and executing plans.  Whether it’s a plan to win a deal, to make a high impact sales call, to maximize your share within the account or territory, to make your quota, to hire the right people……  For all of these, we maximize our effectiveness and the quality of the result by having well defined goals and strategies in place, and refining our plan based on signs/signals we see as we execute the plan.

Many will say, “Dave, I have a plan and goals–my goal is to win a deal, my goal is to make quota….”  This is insufficient, the highest performers we have to know what path we are going to take to achieve our goal.  With aimless wandering, we may achieve our goal, but it could take us a very long time. 

High performers develop a specific plan, they map out specifically how they will achieve their goals.  Their plan focuses on effectiveness, efficiency, and impact.  They are purposeful in what they want to achieve, so they have strong plans in place.  If it’s a sales call, they are focused on accomplishing as much as possible–compressing their sales cycle.  If it’s a deal strategy, they focus on aligning with the customer buying process, creating the greatest value in the process, outperforming the competition.  If it’s a manager hiring a new sales person, they have a profile of the ideal candidate, they look for those that best match that profile.

With a plan that is purposeful, high performers can adapt to “road conditions.”  They recognize when things may be going off target — without a plan it’s impossible.  They are sensitive to the “signs” along the way–they can see obstacles, adjust their strategies to avoid or overcome them, they can see opportunities, taking advantage of them.

Everyone is time constrained–our customers, our team members, our managers.  We don’t have enough time to accomplish everything we want or need to accomplish.  The highest performers manage this by having clear plans in place, executing those plans relentlessly, by paying attention to the signals they encounter–adjusting their plans appropriately?

Do you know where you are going?

Do you have a plan to get there?

Does your plan maximize your effectiveness in achieving your goal?

Does you adjust your plan based on signals you see on the way?

I received a frustrated email from a colleague the other day.  He described a sales situation—he’s selling a solution that creates a tremendous return for this customer.  The return is about 4 times the investment –  a business case that seems compelling on the surface.  But he’s frustrated because he can’t close the deal.

It’s actually a situation B2B sellers encounter quite frequently. We develop great business cases for “The Customer,”  a company or an enterprise.  But the reality often is, the value or the return accrues to one department or group, and all the cost and risk accrues to another group.  For example, in the case of my colleague, all the benefits accrued to an end user group.  The solution produced tremendous cost savings for a specific department.  The challenge, however, was all the expense, work, and risk was in the IT group  — and the IT Vice President simply was deciding not to make the investment.

Frankly, I side with the IT Vice President on this issue, his reluctance to agree to the solution is perfectly rational.  There was no value proposition for him, there was only cost, risk, and hassle.  One might argue that he should invest in this as a “good corporate citizen.”  But it’s a meaningless argument if it puts the attainment of his other goals and objectives at risk.  Why should he divert his resources and budget from a set of projects that he has committed to, and for which he and his organization are being measured?  Just because it’s a priority for one organization, is it a priority, is it more important than all the other initiatives the IT executive has on his plate.

This is a challenge to every B2B seller.  Too often we can create great business value for one group in an organization, but if all the stakeholder invovled aren’t aligned in the priority, if all the stakeholders don’t get value, then our deals get stalled.  And we are actually seeing this happening more and more in B2B sales.  Deals are getting stalled not because of the business case, but because the customer–the individuals, not the enterprise, aren’t aligned in their priorities.

There are a couple of challenges in these types of deal.  Consider:

How does the Vice President of IT get value out of this?  There are lots of ways to start addressing this–can the end user, getting all the benefit provide the funding/budget to the IT group so they can invest in this project and still meet their budget goals?  Can they get IT projects reprioritized so it is a top priority–by which IT is measured?  (Of course then there’s the risk of upsetting all those whose projects were deprioritized)

A great business case is insufficient to win.  Great value for the customer is not just value created and delivered to the enterprise, but value created and delivered to each stakeholder in the decision.  We can’t just create value for one and ignore the others, we have to have a compelling value proposition for everyone involved in the decision.  It’s our responsibility as sales people to make sure we understand what each individual values, and we that we align what we do with what each individual values.

This situation illustrates another major problem.  The most important stakeholder is probably the stakeholder who pays the bill—the stakeholder that has the greatest at risk in the decision.  The beneficiary of all the benefit — the customer we are selling to, may have only upside in the decision.  But the most important people are likely to be those that are paying the bill or have the most at risk.  We find this very frequently in IT project.  Much of the benefit accrues to the end user organization, all the risk, expense, hassle accrues to IT.  IT has to have a win in the decison to move forward.

Often, this problem is made more complex because many customers simply don’t know how to buy.  We may be working with a particular department or group of users.  We might get them excited and wanting to buy—but if other people need to be involved in the buying decision and aren’t, however much our “customers” want to buy, they just won’t.  Often, we have to help our customers know who should be involved in their buying decision and why.  Often we have to help them learn how to buy and organize themselves to buy.  In every sales situation, we need to assess the customer’s buying process–do they have one?  Are the right people involved?  Do they know how to buy, do they know how to make a purchase decision, and to they have all the people who are involved in that participating? 

There are very few complex B2B sales that don’t cross organizational boundaries.  If we are only selling to one buyer, we may win that buyer, but fail to get the order.  We have to sell to all the stakeholders. 

Finally, things have changed substantially in recent years.It used to be that if you created a compelling business case, the company would find the money to fund the project.  That’s no longer true.  Companies are being very selective in their investments, they aren’t investing in every project that has a great business case, they are only investing in projects the are aligned and directly contribute to the top 1-2 strategic priorities of the company.  Even if you have all the stakeholders aligned–if this specific project isn’t directly tied to the top 1-2 strategic priorities, the project will most likely not go forward regardless of how compelling the business case.

For each of your deals, consider:

• Are you selling to all the stakeholders?
• Is there compelling value to each one?
• Can you clearly state what’s in it for the person paying the bill or incurring the risk?
• Does your customer know how to buy and have they organized themselves to buy?
• Does your initiative directly contribute to the top 1-2 strategic initiatives in the organization?

You have to meet all these criteria to succeed.

A strong sales process is critical to our effectiveness as sales professionals.  Without a strong process, it’s comparable to an aimless walk—we may reach our destination, but then again we may not.  Or we may reach our destination after an overly long journey.

As much as has been written about sales processes, I am constantly amazed by the number of organization that either have no process in place, their process is hopelessly outdated, or the sales people and managers don’t use the process.  We can never achieve the highest levels of performance without a process.

So since our goal is to develop the sales process that maximizes our personal effectiveness as sales professional, I thought it useful to outline five conditions your sales process must satisfy to enable you to be best in class.  I’ve restricted this to five, I’m interested in differing views.  Have I chosen the right five or should a different five be selected? (Please, out of pure arbitrariness I’m restricting this to five.  So if you have a sixth or seventh, you have to eliminate some of the original items.)

Condition 1:  Your sales process must not only be aligned with the customers buying process, but it must enable you to help lead and facilitate the customer’s buying process.  Too often we’re glib in talking about the customer buying process, when we really are talking about our sales process.  But buyers rule.  Buying is very complex.  They have to organize themselves to recgnize a problem or opportunity.  They have to get people invovled, define their goals, define how they will make a decision, align themselves internally, and do all sorts of other things.  In the world of complex B2B solutions, customers don’t know how to buy, they may not know they should buy (that is they have an opportunity or a problem).  Sales demonstrates it’s leadership and creates great value by aligning everything they do with the customer buying process.  If your sales process doesn’t drive this kind of behavior in your sales people, go back to Go, do not collect $200 and start all over again.

Condition 2:  The sales process is for the sales people, not anyone else.  The sales process is focused on helping sales people develop and execute high impact sales strategies. It focuses on deals and how sales people win deals.  The sales process is not for sales managers—though managers must use the process in coaching their people, and can get tremendous insight into deals, pipelines, and performance; but all of that is icing on the cake.  Sales people have to be involved in the design and development of the sales process, after all it’s for them and they must own and execute it.  There is no reason to have a sales process other than making sales people more effective.  If your sales people aren’t the center of your focus in your sales process, Go To Jail!

Condition 3:  The sales process must help your sales people improve their ability to win.  It has to be based on your best experience–things your best sales people consistently do to win.  It is unique to your organization, not something generic to all sales people.  You win and lose for specific reasons, there are uniqe trigger events or activities, that dramatically improve your ability to win.  If your sales process is not based on your sales people’s own experience, deep analysis of why you win, why you lose, what events amplify your ability to win, tear it up and start all over again.

Condition 4:  Your sales process should help your sales people compress the sales cycle. We know that wandering aimlessly through the sale results in sales cycles that never end.  The sales process provides structure and focus to the activities sales people undertake.  Sales people should constantly be looking at each opportunity, identifying where they are in the sales process and seeking to compress the process as much as possible.  The salles process provides a framework for the sales person to look at the next steps or critical activities, they can analyze them, they can consider “How many can I accomplish in my next step with the customer?”  Managers in coaching sales people on their deals should look at this, helping the sales person understand where the cycle can be compressed.

Condition 5:  Your sales process must maximize your deal value or profitability.  I know those sales people and organizations whose sole strategy is to win on price don’t read my blogs.  There’s no skill in winning by price, there’s no value creation if you compete by being the lowest cost supplier (all other things equal).  So if you are reading this, you are interested in maximizing your deal value or profitability.  This means how you create value, how you communicate it, how you deliver it needs to be integral to your sales process.  It requires that your process focuses you on customers in your sweet spot, who demand and appreciate the value you create.  It demands that you can differentiate that value from the alternatives the customer is considering–if you can’t your only option is to win by price.

Does your sales process match all these criteria?  If it doesn’t, then you have a bad process.  You will never be able to maxmize the performance of each sales person, you will never maximize the performance of your team or organization.  It isn’t tough to design, your top performers already know it, though they may execute it unconsciously.

Does your sales process match some of the criteria?  Reassess it, tune it, improve it.  No sales process is forever.  How customers buy evolves, your value proposition and value creation evolves, competitors and customers raise the bar.  What worked a few years ago, may not be the most effective now?

If you don’t have a sales process, then you already know you aren’t performing at the highest levels possible.  In fact there is huge room for improvement!  Put together a team of your highest performers, lock them in a room for a couple of days, do some analysis. develop an initial cut of your process–making sure it satisfies all five conditions.  Roll it out, use it for six months, then tune it based on your experience.

If you have a good sales process in place and you aren’t using it, shame on you!  If you want to be a top performer, you have to use everything you can, you have to maximize your performance.  The sales process is the biggest lever a sales professional has to improving performance.

Do I have the right five?  I think so, but I’d love your views.  Remember, I’m arbitrary, I’m not interested in six, seven or more condition, I am only interested in the top five.  What are your thoughts?

As sales professionals and sales leaders, we are constantly focused on achieving the highest levels of performance.  We have to constantly improve–performance that was outstanding five years ago is deficient now.  What is outstanding today will become uncompetitive in the future.

Implementing performance improvement initiatives, continuing to improve and innovate is very difficult.  Sometimes, in looking at sales performance improvement, it’s important to break it into a couple of components:

• Are we being as effective as possible?
• Are we being as efficient as possible?

Sales effectiveness generally focuses on are we doing thing in the best possible way?  Are we doing things right?  We look at things like our sales process–is our sales process maximizing our ability to connect with our customers, to create value in their buying process and to maximize our ability to win?  Or we may look at our account/territory strategies—are we maximizing our contribution to the customer(s), are we aligned with their goals, helping them to achieve them, are we maximizing our share within the account or territory, are we identifying and pursuing every opportunity and maximizing our ability to win them?

Sales efficiency has a slightly different focus than sales effectiveness.  Typically it focuses on speed, time, resource.  Are we achieving our goals in the shortest time possible?  Can we reduce the time or resource required to execute our strategies and goals?  Can we reduce or compress sales cycles?

Effectiveness and efficiency go hand in hand when we are looking to achieve the highest levels of sales performance.  Doing things right–but at the wrong tempo doesn’t allow us to perform as well as possible.  Executing bad  processes in the shortest time possible doesn’t improve performance.

But sometimes, it’s very difficult to achieve both simultaneously.  Too often I see performance improvement initiatives fail because people are trying to change too many things at the same time.  People generally have the capacity to focus and execute 1-3 things very well, the more we pile on, the more difficult it is to excel.  People get confused, priorities are blurry, understanding what works and what doesn’t is impossible.

Often, it’s important to separate the performance improvement initiatives, focusing first on one area of improvement, then the next, then the next…..  Ideally, taking small, but very rapid steps.

As we look at sales effectiveness and efficiency initiatives, generally we have the greatest impact in performance improvement by focusing first on effectiveness—doing things right.  For example, making sure people understand the sales process and are executing it well–improving their deal strategies, creating great value with the customer, maximizing our ability to win.

As we as individuals or as our teams start maximizing their effectiveness or impact, then we can start working on efficiency–how to we achieve the same goals more quickly, how do we achieve the same outcomes with a smaller resource investment?

If you are struggling in making your sales performance improvement initiatives work, consider separating them–focus first on effectiveness, then focus on efficiency.  You’ll find you are accomplishing much more–faster.

As sales professionals, we’re all very goal directed and measurement oriented.  Managers leverage numbers heavily in managing and coaching performance.  But there’s a fine line in using the numbers appropriately in coaching.  Too often, coaching becomes about the numbers and not about what they mean.  The real secret to effective coaching is understanding is causing the results, getting underneath the numbers.

Most of the time the number are just symptoms of something else–an underlying problem of challenge..  None of us would feel comfortable if a doctor just treated our symptoms, rather than examining and trying to understand what creates those symptoms.  Yet too often, we totally ignore this in coaching our people.

The numbers are just symptoms or alerts.  They tell us that something’s happening, they draw our attention to a potential issue.  As managers and coaches, it’s our responsibility, with our people, to drill down understanding what they mean—what underlies them and what do we need to do about it.

Too often, the coaching goes something like this:

Manager:  “You aren’t hitting you numbers for prospecting calls, what are you going to do to fix that?”

Sales person:  “Make more calls????”

Manager:  “Absolutely, you need to hit your numbers!  Make sure you are making the calls!”

What an enormous waste of time!  What has the sales manager learned in this exchange? What has the sales person learned?  Absolutely nothing, yet the manager can “check the box,” having coached the person.  Too many coaching sessions look like this, with the discussion focusing on the wrong issues.  The manager takes no time to understand what’s going on, why the sales person might not be achieving the goals, what it means, or how to improve the ability of the sales person to meet the goal.  There’s no problem solving with the sales person, no conversation about what might be done, no skills building.  It ends up being a lost opportunity.

It is worse, the manager may not understand why the goal, in this case a certain number prospecting calls, was established in the first place.  The number was established for a reason, presumably a certain number of calls result in a certain number of qualified leads which result in more opportunities in the pipeline, which ……….  But too often,managers and sales people lose this connection, so the number becomes an end in itself, disconnected from why it was established in the first place.

Soon we have sales people and sales managers going through the motions, with no idea about what they mean and why there were established in the first place.

Metrics are important, they help us understand whether we are on target to achieve our goals or not.  For the most part, the numbers aren’t the end–they are indicators of whether we are likely to achieve our goals or not.

For managers, make sure you understand what you are trying to achieve with each metric that you are putting in place.  Understand how they contribute to the numbers that do count, understand how they link and impact each other.  Make sure you can explain explain all of this to your team.  Give them a context to understand what it means and how it fits into the attainment of their overall goals.  Make sure you can understand and diagnose the problems your people might be having in achieving the goals.  It’s important that sales people understand how everything they do contributes to achieving their goals.

In coaching, think of the actual attainment of the metric as in and indicator or alert.  If a person isn’t achieving the metric, it alerts you to looking at what’s happening and why.  You may need to take corrective action.  All of this is a terrific opportunity for coaching and problem solving with your sales people.  Engage the sales person in looking at the issues and diagnosing them.  Make them a part of the process so they understand and own their role in taking the corrective actions.

This process is very powerful–it not only enables you to identify performance issues with your sales people, developing strategies to improve performance, but the process of working with your people in understanding what the numbers mean, gives sales people greater ability to diagnoze and address issues by themselves.

Do you know what the numbers mean?  Are you managing to the number or are you leveraging these alerts in identifying performance issues and working with your people to develop solutions.