Tag Archives: point-of-view

Get Ready to Ditch the Deck

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Imagine… you’re sitting in a large, hot conference room at the opening session of your company’s annual sales kick-off. The room is filled to the brim with 500 of your sales peers, chatting nervously. The CEO and your executive team are waiting in the front row.

One of your sales leaders takes the stage, carrying a hat. In that hat are the names of all the salespeople sitting around you. He reaches in, pulls out a tiny slip of paper and says, “[Insert your name here], come on up to the stage. Here’s a marker and a flipchart. Now show us our new sales message.”

Sweating yet?

When one of our clients told us that’s exactly how she’s rolling out their new Distinct Point of View, we felt a pang of sympathy for her sales force. We go through a similar exercise every year at our own kick-off, and I can assure you it’s the single most terrifying day of our careers. It’s also the most empowering one.

Why? Because without the psychological security blanket of a pretty, prepared PowerPoint, you have no choice but to deliver your message as a conversation with your prospects. 88% of your executive buyers want you step out from behind the projector. They don’t want to be talked at… they want to be talked with. They don’t want to sit back and listen to you sound smart. They want to have a conversation that makes them smarter. For the conversations where you really have to nail it… when you have to set yourself apart from your competitors, and influence your prospects to do something different… be armed and ready to ditch the deck.

Are you ready to turn on the lights and start a dialogue? Watch this short instant webinar to learn more:

Further reading:
Strip Out Complexity and Confusion with Big Pictures
(Corporate Visions)

We have Met the Enemy and He is PowerPoint
(NY Times)

You Need to be a “Challenger” if You Want to be a Winner!

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Relationship builders come in last and challengers finish first.

A fresh report on the types of sales approaches that win and the ones that do the worst reveals results that could come as a surprise to you, but as Yoda says,  “You must unlearn what you have learned. Try not! Do, or do not! There is no try!”

According to the Corporate Executive Board’s Integrated Sales Executive Council (iSEC), the sales persona that is most successful in winning business is “The Challenger.”  The one that performs the poorest is “The Relationship Builder.”

You can download a summary of the report, Replicating the New High Performer.  But, here’s the gist:

“The Challenger” salesperson is a teacher. She brings a unique perspective to the customer, asserts her perspective and insight, takes control of the  process, and tailors the message to the recipient on the customer’s side.

According to iSEC, in order to build more “Challengers,” companies need to get three things right:

1. Messages: You need to arm your reps to bring a unique perspective or point of view to the customer…in order to “teach.”  In other words, you need to have something worth teaching.

2. Tools: You need to give your reps the tools and skills to master the teaching message (per point #1), and you must equip them to tailor that message to different people and executives on the customer side.

3. Training: Your reps need to develop a greater sense of assertiveness (without being aggressive) so they can start taking control of the sales conversation and confidently guide the dialogue.

Corporate Visions is featured in the iSEC report as a provider of teachable messages and delivery skills. They highlight a CVI case study with our Volvo client, and they are wrapping up another one with our ADP client.

Being a Challenger does not mean being arrogant. The emphasis is on teaching the customer something.

When you get in the room with a customer, are you focused on providing a fresh insight? Do you add value to their day?

Or are you focused on your relationships and giving your customer a hug? (Just poking a little fun at one of the popular business books.)

Challenge your customers like a mentor encourages a protégé.  Help them overcome their initial reluctance to be the hero they are called to be.  Be the “Yoda” to their “Luke Skywalker.”  You get the point.

Download a summary of the report, Replicating the New High Performer.

You Can Lead a Horse to Water…

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It’s kickoff season and all through the office nothing is stirring except for the marketing department. They haven’t slept for weeks. All the planning, coordination and presentations must come together to energize the sales force for another year.

Let’s see what should we talk about? Hmmm….how about last year’s performance milestones? That should make them feel good. How about a pep talk from the president? Maybe the CFO should talk about our financials. We’ve got lots of product folks who will want to talk about what’s coming. Of course, marketing will talk about all the cool things they are doing to make our lives easier. Who has climbed a mountain or gone into space recently that we can get as a guest speaker? Sales management will want to rollout the new price list and compensation plans. Anything we’re forgetting? Oh yeah, the awards banquet!

Sales Meeting Attendee:
Yippee – another great venue for the sales meeting. I hope I’ll get outside the hotel this year. Three days of death by presentations. I’m not carrying all that paper with me. They better ship it home or it’s going to stay in the hotel room. I wonder who will get stuck with the bar tab this year? Oh great, another incentive program that’s trying to take money out of my pocket. Would someone please remind me why I’m doing this?

You’ve heard the English idiom, “you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.” Sales people and sales meetings are a lot like that saying. You go to great lengths to prepare content that should be thirst quenching and, yet, it is received with a lackluster attitude. Why? Aren’t sales meetings supposed to be fun and exciting? Aren’t they supposed to make “the troops” reenlist for another year? They really need all this content, don’t they?

As a consultant with Corporate Visions, I get asked each year to speak at a number of sales kick-offs. They represent a change from my standard workshop delivery, and they are great confidence boosters. I often have enough preparation time at the event to allow me to sit in on a few of the presentations. While the company names change from week to week, the content rarely does. For the most part, the content is really good. It’s exactly what the sales organization should hear to get them ready to go out and do it again this year. The fault I find is in the delivery. I’m not referring to the speaking skills of the presenters. I’ve seen many presenters who had poor speaking skills, yet could deliver their message in a captivating way. How can you get sales people to “drink” in your message? You can lead a horse to water and make it drink! How? You salt their oats.

Most of the content I see presented at sales meetings is not perceived by the salesperson sitting in the audience as relevant to their success. If the content is important but not being interpreted as such, then there could be a problem with your delivery. You’re not salting their oats.

Prior to one company’s kick-off, I had the privilege of working with a Vice President of Marketing, whose challenge was to roll-out a new set of sales messages. I asked how he would serve up this “sparkling water” to his “thirsty horses.” He told me that he would explain to them the process that his people went through to identify and create their messages. Then, he would tell them what the messages are and hand out a document that describes them in more detail. That sounds like a logical approach, but my comment was that they will probably not “drink.” The reason is that you’re preparing an “intellectual” exercise for your sales team and you haven’t salted their oats.

“What are you talking about?” he asked.
I said, “Well, your content is good, but you’re serving it up in a dry format, and it’s all about you and not about them.”
“What do you mean? Of course it’s about them.”
No, I said, it’s about what you did, what you created, what you want and why you think it’s important. You’re not delivering theses messages from their point-of-view. How about starting your presentation by asking your sales audience what they think are the biggest challenges facing their prospects? Then ask them the question, ‘What if you had a set of solutions that could address the most critical customer challenges in a unique way? Would that impact your success in 2007? Now imagine if you had a set of sales messages that would clearly articulate this unique value to your prospects. That’s exactly what you will see in this presentation. You will leave here today with a set of simple sales messages that will define a battle ground that you alone can win on. Would you like to stay and see them or should we break for lunch early?’

The next time you’re asked to deliver a piece of content via a presentation, ask yourself; Am I delivering this content from my audiences’ point-of-view? Am I delivering it in a way that makes the value of this content come alive to them? Am I salting their oats?

-Dean Schantz, Corporate Visions’ Consultant