Tag Archives: sales methodology

What’s Killing Your Sales?

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Do you know why your salespeople lost that big piece of business?  Do you know why you are taking a beating on price? Do you know why prospects aren’t calling you back? One answer could be that this is an epic failure of your sales process or methodology. Or maybe the problem is that your sales process has no answers for the challenges of commoditization.

According to Sirius Decisions, a leading marketing and sales advisory service, “The salesperson’s inability to communicate value during the customer interactions is perceived as the greatest inhibitor to sales success.”  In other words, if your sales force cannot communicate why your solution is different, better and worth more there’s nothing your sales process can do to fix that.

It’s not a skills problem that’s killing your sales and profits, it’s a story problem.

Dial a Methodology

For years, companies have tried different methodologies to improve sales and protect their profit margins.  They simply spin the dial to pick one of the many options available in the marketplace in hopes that it will help them rise above the economic pressures and rapid commoditization of their marketplace.

Unfortunately, many of these programs barely generate the desired results.  In fact, McKinsey & Company documented that 75 percent of solution-selling efforts were deemed as failures within three years.

How does your sales process or methodology help position your offerings as solutions to client’s problems and then differentiate you from your competition?  If you can’t answer this, it’s easy to understand why your sales force has to resort to discounting in order to win business.

How is sales messaging different from sales methodology?

If you build the world’s greatest racecar, but don’t put gas in the tank, how fast will it go?  Will you win any races?  This analogy applies to sales processes and methodologies.  You can put the right structure in place for making a great sales call.  However, without the right messages, tools, and conversation or presentation coaching, the process alone won’t get you the victory.

Having the right messages to fuel your methodology is more important than ever.  Sales messaging that fuels better customer conversations is a top strategic initiative for many companies. Because at some point during the sales process, your sales peoples lips will have to move or their fingers have to hit the keyboard, and you have to execute remarkable, memorable, and compelling customer conversations.  These crucial moments of truth will mean the difference between winning and losing every time, because it’s not just about knowing where to show up and with whom to speak – it’s about what you say (at the right time) when you get there.

To learn more about how to differentiate your company, check out this instant webinar – Distinct Point of View: Bring Them the Bad News

Prospecting is Dead. Introducing Deal Creation.

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The traditional 20-question approach to prospecting is dead.

First, it’s undifferentiated. Everyone can ask the same questions.

Second, it’s frustrating for the prospect. Executives are too busy to play along. Why do they have to answer your questions before you’ve given them a good reason to give you that information?

You have a new messaging challenge in today’s skittish marketplace. It’s no longer about prospecting questionnaires. It’s about effective deal creation.

I didn’t know I had a music problem.

One of the smartest consultants in our company explains it this way:

A few years back, if a salesperson selling iPods asked me an open-ended prospecting question like:  “Do you have a music problem?” I would’ve answered, “Not that I know of…  I mean, I’ve got CDs and this awesome five-disk CD changer…  I’ve also got this CD walkman that gives me that high quality CD sound when I work out… it’s all good.”

Then the iPod salesperson follows up with, “How satisfied are you with the way this works for you?” Again, I would have said, “As far as I know, it works as well as any other CD changer or walkman.” Maybe I’d be looking for a 10-disk changer or something like that, but frankly, at this point, I don’t know I have a music problem. I’m comfortable with the status quo. No need to do anything different…no need to buy anything from you.

Now, listen to how the discussion changes when you employ a deal creation dialogue method:

  • How often do you pay for CDs, but end up only liking one or two songs? What if you never had to pay for songs you don’t like ever again? What if, instead, you could listen to all the songs from an album ahead of time, and create a library of music by buying just those songs you wanted to have? Then, you could use the money you saved to buy more of the songs and artists you like.
  • How easy is it for you to take your favorite CDs with you wherever you go, in your house or apartment, at school, in the car, or while exercising? Ever feel like that walkman is too bulky for a rigorous workout? Imagine if you could carry a library of thousands of your favorite songs on a gadget smaller than a credit card… a gadget that fits easily inside your pocket, and that plays perfectly in every setting, including your most intense exercise routines?
  • Imagine if you could play just certain types of songs at certain times, like if you are entertaining people, or you are reading or studying, or working out, or simply relaxing? What if you could create specialized playlists from your library of songs that enable you to essentially create your own albums for these different occasions, activities and moments of your life? And what if they were available at the press of a button on this same credit card-sized gadget?

Do you hear the difference between these dialogues? Now, I know I have a music problem. My current solution is sub-optimal because these are real pains that I’ve ignored or assumed were just part of what I had to deal with.

Deal Creation is Insight-Dripping Questions

Deal Creation is about asking insight-dripping questions that make the prospect realize they are actually in more pain than they knew… and that they are no longer in an acceptable position. And then, showing them that there is a significantly better way to do things available to them. All the while making sure they envision themselves in a better scenario, as opposed to you putting your solution at the forefront.

Deal Creation dialogues lead them TO your solution, not WITH your solution. But, it is a much more directed and purposeful dialogue than the open-ended, who-knows-where-it-will-land discussion that is today’s 20-question prospecting checklist.

Check out this quick, 16-minute, instant webinar to find out more about Deal Creation-messaging as a replacement for traditional Prospecting approaches. And, start putting more opportunities into your pipeline.


http://win.corporatevisions.com/DealCreation.html

And if you’re interested in attending a live Deal Creation workshop, drop us an email at cvimarketing@corpv.com for workshop schedules.

- Tim Riesterer
CMO and SVP Strategic Consulting and Products
Corporate Visions Inc.

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Are You “Sales Ready?”

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The Top 5 Sales Readiness Initiatives with the Greatest Impact

Sales Readiness means many things.  Lots of initiatives can fall under that banner.

Wouldn’t it be great to know which five (5) have the greatest impact on Sales performance?

The world’s largest online training community, TrainingIndustry.com, recently released the findings of its major Sales Readiness survey.  In it they identified 14 “sales readiness” initiatives, and then asked the respondents to rate them based on perceived impact.

Here are the top 5:

  1. Value Propositions –creating differentiated positioning that helps create competitive separation
  2. Product/Service Information – providing accessible, usable solution information not just feature/function
  3. Executive Communications – help communicating with executive buyers not just user influencers
  4. Customer Needs Assessment – improve ability to conduct insightful discovery conversations
  5. Overcoming Common Sales Objections – reframe concerns to take them off the table or turn to advantage

What do all of these top sales readiness initiatives have in common?  They all revolve around creating and delivering great sales or customer messaging.  In other words…messages matter most when it comes to impacting sales performance.  What are you doing to fine-tune your messaging?  What is your organization doing to leverage their messaging as a strategic asset?

Here’s a quick, 5-minute executive summary review of those findings to help you focus on the Top 5 Sales Readiness.

Can’t click on the image above?  Copy and paste this link into your browser:

http://www.brainshark.com/corpv/salesreadinesssurvey?tx=Feed

Lost in Translation, Part II – Context is King

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Ever heard of the Rosetta Stone? One man spent his entire life unlocking its secrets. We know you don’t have that kind of time, so just watch this video to get up to speed:

It wasn’t until the discovery of this stone in 1799 by Napoleon’s troops that the modern world was able to decipher hieroglyphics. This stone carried the key to finally cracking the hieroglyphic code.

It contained a carved text made up of hieroglyphs along with Egyptian and Greek translations, which enabled scholars who knew Greek and Egyptian to work backwards to finally understand the hieroglyphs.

In some ways, sales people need to be like the Rosetta Stone. They must translate your product and services details into something the customer will understand and care about.

Context is King!

Customers know what they are trying to accomplish, and they understand there are challenges that are causing them pain. They are looking for a partner company to share a unique insight and clearly align their offering with these challenges, demonstrating how they will provide relevant value in meeting the customer’s objectives.

This is called “context.” Without context there can be no translation. Or the translation will be questionable because you are forcing your customer to do the heavy-lifting.

What happens if you leave the translation of your message up to your customer?

  • It’s hard work! It takes a ton of effort to listen to a message that’s all about your company, your product and your technology and try to figure out what that means to me – the customer. People like to hear ideas and answers for their problems; they don’t like to be sold product features and have to intuit how it helps.
  • It’s confusing! Your customer wants to know what they will be able to “do” with your product. What they can “do better” or “do different” in order to succeed.  Forcing them to translate your product features and capabilities into something meaningful can become frustrating and futile.
  • It’s boring! How long can you sit in any conversation listening to someone talk all about themselves before you tune them out?  If you ask the right questions to uncover their pains, issues and challenges, then you can focus your entire message on your customer. Putting your product and your message in their world – in their Story. You’re making it more relevant and more exciting for them.

Language translators didn’t need more hieroglyphs in order to finally come up with a translation. They had thousands of years of hieroglyphs. What they needed was the hieroglyphs to be put into the context of a language that made sense to them.

Similarly, your customers don’t need another company capabilities presentation or credentials dump. They’ve heard the same thing a thousand times. What they need is your company to put your offer into the context of what they need to accomplish.

Does this mean more work for you? Yes! Is it going to be harder to do? Probably!

But know that most of your competitors aren’t taking the time to do this. You have an opportunity to be your customers’ Rosetta Stone.

You’ll not only translate a better message, you’ll win more business by doing it!

— by Mike Miller, Consultant, and Tim Riesterer, SVP of Strategic Consulting & CMO at Corporate Visions Inc.

If you’re in sales, check out The Power of Story webinar to find out more about translating your message into your buyer’s world.
If you’re in marketing, check out the Bridge the Messaging Gap webinar to see how you can translate your 30,000-foot level brand message into a 3-foot level field message that’s ready for your sales team to use.