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Provocative
Selling 2013
There is nothing new under the sun in sales, or so they say. Not so fast.
Fundamentals never go out of style, of course, however how we prepare, engage, converse, present, confirm and conclude transactions large and small is always open for improvement.
The Challenger Sale and supporting research exposed the sales world to the need to bring insight, knowledge and general intelligence to the sales conversation. Teams all over the world have gotten the memo and are upgrading how their sales teams address their customers and opportunities in this new era.
But it's always been clear that there's more to individual and organizational sales success than merely the sales call or selling conversation. We believe it's all about the total package:
- The Person
- The Territory
- The Process
- The Strategy
- The Message
- The Conversation
- The Opportunity
- The Activity
- The Metrics
- The Leadership
All the pieces come together to make a comprehensive whole. How that entity is defined, developed, honed and replicated determines winners and losers, or mere laggards.
Want to see the blueprint?
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New 2013 2nd Edition!
42 Rules to Increase Sales Effectiveness
by Michael Griego  |
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Grading the Pipeline 
We're well into March and the pipeline pressure is building; that is, pressure from above to build the pipeline. How's it going? How you stand now is a very strong indicator of success for the rest of the year. There is still time to recover and get where you need to be, but this is absolutely the time to assess yourself and the team and objectively grade the pipeline.
There are 4 key areas to effectively assessing a sales pipeline:
1. QUANTITY - Is there enough coming into the funnel? There are a couple of issues here. First, Are there enough leads getting generated? Know and track these numbers like you're life depends on it. Actually, your sales life does. Secondly, Are leads and opportunities being captured correctly to measure in the funnel? If reps don't get this info in the CRM, there's no visibility. Not putting data into the CRM is so yesterday. We should be past that.
2. QUALITY - Are these the right type of deals and opportunities? This starts with correct targeting and prioritization of territory and accounts. Rigorous attention to qualification criteria will eliminate riff-raff deals that can delude one into thinking the pipeline is healthy and growing. Setting the bar high and forcing the exception to jump will drive good attention to qualification detail.
3. BALANCE - Is there a healthy spread of deals moving through the pipeline? While there should be a larger quantity at the top (hence funnel), careful note of the staging of deals throughout the pipeline is critical. Watch for stalls in 2nd or 3rd stages and for the causes. Often lax or inconsistent discovery and/or solution development practices lead to a bulging of this part of the pipeline. Deals can sit and deceive. Crisp competitors will beat you here.
4. VELOCITY - How fast are opportunities moving through the pipeline? Watch for days in the sales funnel. Knowing this metric is helpful to pick up anomalies and standards and setting expectations. Great insight here can lead to finding ways to accelerate sales cycles, highlighting deals that need aggressive management, and understanding nuances between your own product/service configurations.
For each of these 4 areas, know specifically what earns an 'A' and a 'B' and a 'C' and 'D' or whatever scale you want to use. Keep it simple and clear. Quarterly and Mid-Quarter Report Cards are standards that shouldn't go away.
Does your pipeline meet the grade?
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Forecasting Enabling Technology
Aberdeen Group research published in 2012, Better Sales Forecasting Through Process and Technology, highlights how top performers better deploy process and technology to achieve not only more accurate forecasts, but better business results.
Forty-one percent (41%) of Best-in-Class (top 20%) firms within this research (defined as superior customer retention and sales quota attainment metrics, as well as shortening sales cycles) support "integrating sales content into the CRM to better inform the forecast with sales activities executed during the selling/buying cycle," while 21% of Industry Average firms (middle 50%) and only 12% of Laggards (bottom 30%) do the same.
Additionally, Aberdeen points out that 90% of Best-in-Class firms use enabling technology for sales forecasting and analytics, vs. 76% of Industry Average firms and 58% of Laggards.
These numbers are somewhat surprising, particularly that so many firms are still "lagging" at some level on this topic. Technology indeed can be overdone in sales organizations; however, it certainly must be used.
More...
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Rule #24 - Master Your 30-60-90 Day Forecast
There are two things I ask to look at first when I am brought in as a consultant for a sales organization. The first is the documentation of their sales process (recall from Rule 10 that only 1/3 of firms have this clearly articulated); the second is their sales forecast report, or more specifically, their 30-60-90 day forecast report.
These reports tell me everything. I can see how disciplined the sales and marketing teams are; how clear and knowledgeable the management is on their go-to-market strategies, and how tightly managed or not is the pipeline management and forecasting process.
The CEO of a Silicon Valley startup told me that he would potentially need my help if they missed their quarterly number. He showed me a forecast report that had 88 line items of opportunities that his VP of Sales said might happen, though he couldn't say which ones. Only one deal was closed two months into the quarter. I got a call from the CEO in the first week of the next quarter. My first question was, "How many deals did you bring in last quarter?" He said, "Three deals, and one of them wasn't even on the original forecast report!"
I spent the next 60 days working with the CEO, VP, and the Inside Sales and Outside Sales teams in reconstituting their pipeline management and forecasting system. I implemented a 30-60-90 Day Forecast Report that was extracted out of their CRM system, Salesforce.com. We enforced a mandatory updating of the CRM by Friday noon each week. We reviewed the following report each week by rep at the Monday morning sales meeting, with each rep seeing each other's report. This report has three important components...
How's your forecasting process?
Get the Book...
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Shakeseare on Sales Forecasting 
"If you can look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not, speak then unto me."
- William Shakespeare, English poet and playwrite |
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