Viewing posts categorised under: Sales planning
Selling in Turbulent Times
Posted by Steven in Sales planning | 0 comments
I was on a great webinar last week presented by Dow
Jones and CSO Insights, and I recommend
that you listen to the replay. You can click here to watch the "Successful
Sales Strategies" replay. We can talk about Sales 2.0, and sales
effectiveness, or even sales optimization. But a lot of what is making sales people successful
at selling in this economy is a) having good sales intelligence and b) having an
effective sales plan or an account plan!
Why did I like this so much? First, they based the strategies not only on the sales truths that
don't change, but on the completely changed realities of selling today.
Consultative Selling
Posted by Steven in Sales planning | 0 comments
I hear this term more often than I care to admit. So many companies and Sales
Managers tell me "We have a consultative sales approach." "We
want our people to really take more of a consultative selling approach" The
funny thing is that so few of the sales managers saying this actually
know what that means. I'm not saying that you have to have been a
consultant to sell like one, but you have to understand what and how people want to
buy. They do not want to be sold and they are tired of the old way of selling.
Andrew Sobel said it best in his book "Making Rain"
In today's market, I believe that the real consultative sales person will have the lowest expense account on the team. Bringing value to a meeting may mean a Latte or Coffee from Starbuck's, but a nice lunch or dinner only adds a dimension of Dis-trust to the equation. If you can afford to buy a nice dinner, round of golf, or fancy lunch... what does that say about 1) your prices, and 2) your business acumen."In today's markets, you win by assiduously building relationships with clients , being willing to stick with them over the long term, and adding value every step of the way. Golf and Lunch are nice, but they no longer represent real value to clients - they can get these from anyone."
In this economy, showing value is about understanding their business and the business challenges that they face. Once you understand that, you work diligently WITH them to help them solve these issues. This will win more sales than any lunch or golf game.
So... What is your plan to know as much about your targets and key accounts as possible?How To Write a Successful Sales Plan? Know your stuff!
Posted by Steven in Sales planning | 0 comments
Especially in a turbulent economy, having a strategy and a sales plan is critical for staying focused, staying on track and making the mid-course corrections necessary to succeed. But the basis of any sales plan has to be based on your knowledge of your business. What has worked and what hasn't worked? More importantly, IS THAT STILL TRUE? So do an analysis of your business whether you are the CEO or the Sales rep.
- First, what is your average deal? I really have to laugh when I ask a sales person and they tell me that "there is No average". The dictionary defines "Average" as:
–nounStatistics.
the mean obtained by adding several quantities together and dividing the sum by the number of quantities: the arithmetic mean of 1, 5, 2, and 8 is 4. Now, why is this important? You have to know based on your business, what you need to do to succeed. Knowing that if I closed 20 deals last year and made 110% , with an average deal size of $30,000, that is good information. (Usually what I do is take out the two biggest deals that are not typical) So now I can focus on how many I need. I can now look at my performance YTD and my pipeline and see where I am at, NOT JUST from a dollar amount. So now YTD I have 15 deals and that average is $27,000, I know that the deals are getting smaller, (or that I had a couple of big ones if you didn't take them out) and I need x number of deals based on the average deal in order to make my number. Now I can look at my pipeline and see if I have the deals I need.
Sell your way out of it… Survive Q4 with Strategy Planning
Posted by Steven in Sales planning | 0 comments
As I sit typing this, I admit that I have been staring at the screen for an hour.
(well, maybe not a full hour, but..) With everything that is going on in the markets
around the world, I just couldn't decide what to post. I finally decided that if I
could offer some tips for surviving the fourth quarter and setting up the first
quarter that would be useful.
Last week I made several suggestions including looking at past business and past
messaging. All of that applies still. However, I would suggest a few more things
for this quarter.
First, focus on the fundamentals. Get back to basics. One of my
favorite stories is about Vince Lombardi. Every year the first day of training camp
he would hold up a ball as say to the team, "This is a Foot Ball." By the way, by
fundamentals I mean, Prospecting, Questioning, cold calls, customer follow up,
research, and of course Strategy Planning.
What are you or you team doing to focus on the fundamentals? Check out the about.com article by Darrell Zahorsky. He has great
experience
and a nice write up on sales strategies.
Now is all of the focus on Q4, don't forget about Q1. I am fond of saying that as
sales people we "Drain the swamp" every year end... But the most successful sales
people plan for the first quarter. They get out of the gate fast and don't have to
play catch up. We as sales people have a big red RESET button that gets pushed on
December 31st.
One way to get a jump on the first quarter is to elephant hunt in the fourth. Why?
Because you know that you aren't looking for end of year business, and so do they. You
have time to build a relationship and sell at a slower pace that large
enterprise companies need anyway. For a good article on Elephant hunting, see Ray Silverstein's article at Entrepreneur.com.
Last suggestion... Stop worrying about the 201(k). I say to myself and always to
sales teams... "Sell your way out of it!"
