MXL's Mike Griego Speaks at Top Sales World's 2011 Sales Conference, May 12th
Founder and President of MXL Partners, Michael Griego, will be a featured speaker at the upcoming 2011 Sales & Marketing Success Conference, May 9-13. His presentation is scheduled for May 12th, 12:45pm - 1:15pm titled "4 Modern Fundamentals for Sales Success."

Many salespeople and sales managers today still operate under "old school" selling methods, tactics, processes and practices. While some fundamentals never go out of style, they need to be updated for the modern era. This session will look at 4 key modern fundamentals for sales success that every salesperson and sales manager should review, update and apply appropriately to themselves in their selling arena.

Successful salespeople, and those that manage them, control 4 fundamental areas in their selling domain: 1) What you Know; 2) What you Do; 3) What you Say; and 4) What you Think.

In this session, Michael Griego, a 30-year Silicon Valley veteran, top sales performer, executive, consultant and renown trainer, will break down the essentials of appropriate sales knowledge, activity, messaging and motivation for today's marketplace.

Learn the "new school" variations on proven fundamentals that will keep you and your team fresh, productive, competitive and effective.

2011 Sales Performance Study - Sales Management Study
CSO Insight's recent Sales Optimization Report reveals that when rating their "Ability to Accurately Forecast Business," 46% of salespeople rate Needs Improvement. This is down from 60% five years ago, so there is progress in forecasting accuracy. There were 44% that rated Meets Expectations, and only 7% seen as Exceeds Expectations.

At MXL Partners, we're big believers in a rolling 30-60-90 Forecasting methodology. Many companies acknowledge that they practice this, however we've recently seen yet another example this quarter of a sophisticated multi-billion organization with sketchy forecasting practices.

While all the information is in the CRM and reports are plentiful, there are still 3 issues:

1. Visual Clarity in Reporting
- CRM reports are cluttered and inconsistent, allowing missed cues and trends buried in the data.
2. Consistent Updating and Accuracy of Information
- without deliberate discipline and appropriate attention to detail at the rep and management level, this is a key reason for misleading forecasting.
3. Adherence to Sales Process
- paying only lip service to stages, milestones and steps causes more pain and delusion than it should.

When a rep creates and manages their own visibility reports of all Pipeline, Best Case and Commit Opportunities, updates this weekly with views over at least a rolling 90-day horizon, and then forces adjustments and actions to this Pipeline/Forecast view per a prescribed milestone process, then they will be prepared to report to management, and themselves, with truth and accuracy.

It's actually simple and powerfully effective. The problem is not in the CRM but at rep and management level.

'Roll Your Own' Selling
There's a growing trend in the sales kingdom. It's ad-hoc sales messaging. Not necessarily bad if you've got a hot and compelling product. Certainly some sales teams can still be successful while they vary in their adherence to the purity of whatever target sales messaging was produced by Marketing. It's like winning a game with a team of great athletes in spite of a less than coherent game plan.

The problem catches up to you eventually. Wide variations of a team's sales messaging (direct, phone or email) will leave openings for the competition to exploit if they're better at this than your team.

There are 3 keys to effective sales messaging:

1. Audience Specific Targeting
2. Clarity of Market Trends, Audience Objectives and Challenges
3. Short and Long Sales Talk Tracks, Questions and Visuals

In the absence of effective control of these, any sales team will "roll their own" - that is, they will create their own versions of scripts and emails and anything that they believe they need to be successful. Sometimes what they create is worthwhile; many times it can be quite ugly. Multiply this across an aggressive and frustrated sales team and you have a recipe for confusion internally and in the marketplace.

The fix takes work and involves (re)alignment or sometime wholesale (re)creation. It's critically important though to avoid an ad-hoc sales organization.

Do you have an ad-hoc messaging, 'roll your own' sales team?

Winning in Sales
"The secret to winning is constant, consistent management." - Tom Landry, former NFL Head Coach

Email: sales@mxlpartners.com

Phone: 650-279-3467

Web: http://www.mxlpartners.com