LET'S-BEGIN

9 point plan to carry out a macro sales analysis of your business

In a tough market it is equally important to have both the detailed view of your business and also the "Macro" or high level big picture.  But high level views can sometimes be a bit vague and so here is one approach which is a bit more pragmatic with nine steps to consider

Step 1 - Market Sectors
Careful tracking of demand for your goods or services from each sector of the market you deal with is needed to allow early identification of changes.  Sales resources can be re-allocated to sectors that show potential to grow or remain stable vs. those sectors where demand is dropping.  Customers are usually measured on their potential to place orders but now equal consideration should be given to profitability and ability to pay.  Early decisions to exit unprofitable sectors or customers will help sales maintain successful levels of business.

Step 2 - Customer value propositions
Sales and marketing must jointly define and agree the customer benefits (or business case) for each of the goods, services or solutions being sold.  If sales of a specific solution are poor and the benefits prove hard to define this must lead to questioning whether the solution should continue to be sold or its price or specification being revised.

Step 3 - Filling the pipeline
No matter how effective an organisation is in winning business it must always maintain an adequate flow of new qualified leads (note: not just enquiries) into the pipeline.  Exactly how many leads are adequate needs to be kept under assessment by considering the ratio of qualified leads to orders.

Step 4 - Speed of follow up to qualified leads
A common failing is timely follow up of leads, which can be a result of poorly qualified leads (which are in reality only enquiries) or sales force ineffectiveness.  Irrespective of the cause in a tough market sales must rapidly follow up leads to ensure potential customers are engaged before they go to competitors

Step 5 - Sales process changes
Customer’s can change the way they buy, taking longer to decide or adding in extra steps and procedures into their buying process (your sales process).  By monitoring the sales process regularly changes to these indices will help give you advance warning of potential delays to orders and keep the forecast accurate.

Step 6  - Seniority of customer decision makers
Smaller spending budgets can mean you will need to sell to much more senior people in your customers to win orders.  Sales force training to engage effectively with customers at this level helps protect ongoing business and the orders you expect to win.

Step 7  - More RFPs, RFIs & E Auctions
Make sure that the customers who you are forecasting business from are not adding in the stage of issuing an RFI or planning holding an E-Auction. It is essential to have had engagement with the customer to shape the requirements to match your solution to avoid getting drawn into a massive amount of work and then lose the business

Step 8 - Final price negotiations
Track how long and hard these are to win.  Lengthening timescales or much lower pricing can mean that either the customer has some overall cost reduction target or that a competitor has offered much lower prices -or both!

Step 9 - Warranties or service penalties
Customers may want to see extended warranty periods for free or increased service penalties for non performance.  Both represent costs to your business.  Aside from agreeing one response can be to specify that the customer must do more "self-support" or more of their testing prior to raising a service call.

Find out more about this and other relevant topics in our online course Sales and Sales Management in a Tough Market (buy now at 50% off).

Richard Lowe
www.lets-begin.com

How to build a customer business case to increase sales success

Being able to explain the value proposition of what you sell in terms of the business benefits to the customer is a vital skill in any market conditions.  In a tough market, when many organisations have dramatically reduced their spending, every decision to purchase products or services must be justified with a strong and compelling business case.  This must prove how much money will be saved or generated as a result of using the product or service.

Tough markets force changes on customer's purchasing criteria and for that reason suppliers must have a clear definition of their "ideal customer".  Precisely what are the characteristics of the ideal customer?  For example their size, location, type of business, pressures they face and the problems they will spend money to solve.  Data should be gathered from the sales force, the customer base, marketing, and business partners.  Competitors also need monitoring to detect early signs of a change to buying priorities in the market.

A generic business case for the product or service is only a starting point; this must then be tailored to appeal to different decision makers in the customer who will each have their own criteria that need addressing if they are to approve a decision to buy.  For example finance managers may consider cost reduction aspects of the decision; operational people will evaluate the ease of using the product and the efficiencies it can deliver whereas service managers will be concerned with improvements to their own customer service.

Detailed examination of existing customers is essential:

• their decision to buy,
• who was involved,
• the criteria they evaluated the product against
• what triggered the decision to be taken

Business cases to buy products or services may come from a variety of different reasons.  Some organisations will be motivated by reducing costs and efficiencies.  In the commercial sector companies may be motivated by being able to launch a new service to their customers and generate revenues.  The need to comply with government regulations can drive others to buy

Building a business is a consultative process and needs to engage the customer's people in order to obtain the data on which the case is built.  Simply sending a spreadsheet projecting potential savings or gains is not effective and is almost certain to be dismissed by the customer. 

There are some steps and tools that can be used to construct a business and these are discussed in our online course How to protect your topline in a downturn (buy now at 50% off)

One very powerful tool to use is a set of questions that are designed to uncover the amount of savings and gains that the customer should be able to achieve by buying your product or service.  For this to be credible the question list - and the likely range of answers - needs to be built from data obtained from existing customers.

Without a compelling business case customers will, in the current economic conditions, delay buying decisions and probably decide to do nothing!  By direct contrast suppliers who adopt business case selling achieve higher value sales, increase their win rates and by definition lock out the competition more often. 

Richard Lowe
www.lets-begin.com

How to boost the sales pipeline & shorten the sales cycle

In normal markets a few leading companies understand the dramatic boost to their business that an effective and sustained lead generation campaign can bring.  Three main benefits are: shorter sales cycles, higher win rates and more effective use of sales people's time.  Most businesses, for reasons unknown, don't give proper attention to this subject and in a downturn or a tough market an effective lead generation campaign can make the difference between survival and failure.

The stakes then are high; the question is will more companies take steps to implement effective lead generation?  A tough market should be a catalyst for doing this immediately and a core requirement is that both sales and marketing co-operate in every respect of the campaign.  Any resistance from sales about quality of leads and quick follow up or unwillingness of marketing to modify the campaign based on constructive sales feedback will doom the campaign to failure.

3 steps to implementing an effective lead generation and management campaign

1. Understanding the market
   Once objectives for the campaign are defined sales and marketing must agree a definition of the ideal customer -in part by looking at existing customers.  What are their needs, what is their pain (what problem are they trying to solve) what is the job role of the buyer (or buyers), what benefits did they see in the product (or service) that caused them to buy, and what triggered the decision to buy - as opposed to delaying a decision, what they replaced with your product, how did they get to hear about your company.  This will help you shape the value proposition of your product for use in the lead generation campaign. 
   
   Current performance statistics should be agreed prior to the campaign starting including: the number of enquiries to leads, leads to qualified sales opportunities and to orders.  Length of sales cycle should also be understood.
   
   It is a good idea at this stage that the sales and marketing team understand the challenges to success of the campaign which can include: poorly qualified leads which are in reality only enquiries, lack of sales follow up - either at all or quickly, no feedback mechanism either way between sales and marketing, no rating, scoring or common agreement of lead categories and a lack of leadership support
   
   
2. Lead management
   A shared database between sales and marketing is the building block of all campaigns with jointly defined fields of data that need to be held on each customer and potential customer.  Many companies "lose" leads when trying to operate two separate databases and give up synchronizing them which makes effective measurement, reporting and improvement of the campaign impossible.
   
   Marketing and Sales must agree on how to score and categorise leads to ensure that for example early stage enquires are not miss-described as leads and that equally sales ignore a "hot" qualified lead.
   
   
3. Planning & executing a lead generation campaign
   Clear objectives and a "unity of purpose" between sales and marketing are the building blocks of an effective campaign.  Assuming the value proposition is already defined then a set of proof and interest points of it need listing for use in the campaign, not least by inside sales people.  Lead generation operates in today's "noisy" market where we all suffer from too much communication of all types.  This means it must focus in on exciting and interesting benefits to arouse the attention and interest of potential customers.  Next a list of questions can be created which will gather the information from the prospective customer to correctly identify their position in the sales cycle (cold warm or hot).
   
   A wide choice of mediums exist for use in lead generation ranging from the internet, to events, phone calls, PR & Advertising.  Good campaigns often include combinations of several types of medium in order to engage potential customer's attention and eventually cause them to want contact from a sales person.
   
   When customers buy is probably the most neglected aspect of lead generation and is responsible for a lot of wasted time created from premature leads being given to sales.  Leads must be "nurtured" by the campaign until they meet the pre-agreed criteria which dictate they are ready to be passed to sales.  At this point if existing customers are likely to buy more products then care must be taken to address them in a specific way in the campaign.
   
   Finally measurement of the campaign's results with regular and public attention to the campaign by both sales and marketing leaders and a willingness to "performance tune" it based on factual feedback will send a signal to everyone about the importance and value of the lead generation campaign.

For a fuller discussion of this and other best practices of sales leadership our online course called How to protect your topline in a downturn (buy now at 50% off).

Richard Lowe
www.lets-begin.com

Sales Leadership in a Tough Market – 7 ways to analyse the impact of a downturn

We already discussed some of the factors and warning signs of a downturn and so the next step is to examine the potential impact on your business and, of equal importance, how to maintain the morale of your sales team.  Far reaching changes can be very unsettling to sales teams, poor performers regard them as an excuse and others can have their motivation and focus distracted and potentially "drained away".

As sales leader then you have the task to correctly understand and analyse the impact of changes on your team, take decisions on how to respond to them and explain both the rationale and impact of changes to your team members!  Phew big job then, oh and keep revenues flowing as well.

It makes sense therefore to have some kind of systematic, or checklist type approach and that is what we will discuss now. 

1. First your own company may make organizational changes that alter the structure of the company, products and services, headcount and other areas.  Discuss with your manager how any of these changes affects your team and when you will need to implement any changes
2. Reporting and forecasting will increase as your company"s executives need more current and detailed information about the sales pipeline.  Explain to your sales team that this is a reasonable and necessary request in order that the company manages its costs and income more closely
3. New overall priorities may mean certain existing activities are delayed or cancelled; companies often focus on their core activities in a downturn.  You need to be ready for this which could involve some products being withdrawn from sale or the need for higher margins affecting bids and tenders.  Again a key demand on you is to reassure your team by explaining the company strategy
4. Expect approvals for budgets and hiring to take a lot longer or even get cancelled, be ready to achieve your objectives with fewer resources which may mean re-organising your own team and the way it deals with customers and / or resellers.  Even in such times attention should be given to competitive opportunities as a downturn usually affects everyone.  Unify your team in a plan to identify weaker competitors and target winning business from them, this will also provide a pro-active and positive aspect of a downturn
5. Headcount changes could mean any of the following: removal of contractors, acceleration of exits for serious non-performers and cancellation of any new hiring.  On a positive side if you do have the ability to hire the likelihood is that you can choose from much higher quality people who, under normal market conditions, would not be looking for a new job.
6. Cash becomes a very high focus area and you can expect your team –if not already engaged - to play a bigger role in making sure customers pay their invoices on time.  On the other side you may find certain suppliers, who are not regarded as essential, do not get paid by your company as quickly as before.  If you depend on certain suppliers you will need to make sure your finance department pay their invoices
7. Travel costs are likely to be restricted and therefore you should discuss with your team how to use telephone and video conference calls to maintain customer contact to compensate for fewer face to face meetings.

Get a clear understanding yourself, as the sales leader, of these impact areas and then explain to your sales team what is changing and why.  You need to maintain their focus on winning business and keep morale high.  If there are changes that you disagree with then these must be discussed with your own manager on the basis of "change what you can and accept what you can"t".
For a comprehensive discussion of all these points and 14 other sessions check out the online sales leadership course How to protect your topline in a downturn (buy now at 50% off).

Richard Lowe
www.lets-begin.com

Sales Leadership in a Tough Market – Situation Snapshot

Understanding precisely how a tough market or downturn is affecting your business can be quite difficult.  Maybe everything looks fine, the last quarter was ok, but in reality underneath the surface the threats are gathering.  On the other hand if results are already falling short of plan and you take corrective action but only have incomplete data and do not verify it you could make the situation worse not better.  The picture can be further confused by your sales team who, only used to easier markets, throw out requests for more support without analysing precisely what they want or need.

So there is a need for a quick, lightweight but comprehensive snapshot of your sales situation.  With this snapshot you can take informed decisions to protect your sales now and prepare for growth in the future.

The magnificent 7 ways to give you an accurate situation snapshot:

1. First and most important gather accurate intelligence.  Make sure you have verifiable facts and not assumptions.  Keep of record of who provides the intelligence since the source always places some interpretation on the facts and try to get people with differing viewpoints on issues for a balanced summary
2. Intelligence and data sources should include: customers, business partners, and competitors, professional bodies for your industry and those for your customers, industry sector and financial analysts.  Your own staff in sales, marketing, company executives and other key managers should all be contributing intelligence such that you get the full picture.  Internal mail lists such competition@xxx make it easier to contribute
3. External data points that help you assess where your business is include: is the average time to win a new order lengthening, are customers taking longer to pay, is the volume of new enquiries reducing, is competitive activity changing, are suppliers in difficulty and are government regulations changing quickly?
4. Internal data points include: the projection of sales revenues and/or P&L, the status of sales force morale, are marketing campaigns continuing to generate new leads, does your current go to market plan still make sense, do you need to reduce costs /headcount, is each member of the sales team resilient and generating business and are sales and marketing working very closely together?
5. For each of the subjects listed at 3 & 4 here ask yourself, how does that affect: your customers, your suppliers, your team, you and your results over the next 12 months
6. Test questions to use are: what has stopped, what has started and what has changed in the last few months
7. Finally with this analysis done you can evaluate potential solutions by considering what happens if you do nothing (you may need to wait for a clearer picture to form) or what happens if you decide on some new initiatives/ changes?  Informed decisions that are taken calmly, based on verified intelligence are an effective response to tough market conditions, should protect your business and in parallel reassure the sales team about your leadership.

For a comprehensive discussion of all these points and 15 other sessions check out the online sales leadership course How to protect your topline in a downturn.

Richard Lowe
www.lets-begin.com

Sales Leadership in a Tough Market – How to spot a downturn

How to identify when your business is going into a downturn might seem blindingly obvious - sales reduce.  As smart and experienced as we all are, however, sometimes being busy with the quarterly number can cause us to overlook danger looming ahead.  Added to which some of those signs of a downturn may not be so obvious or may need analyzing as a cluster of signals to uncover what is happening around you.

So here are 11 warning signs:

1. Late or non paying customers -especially those that have changed their normal payment patterns
2. Pipeline freeze - its not just cold weather that freezes things up, budget cancellations and cuts can result in prospects getting stuck or simply fading out of a pipeline - checks to see if prospects are moving in your sales process can help detect this danger
3. Competitive panic - keep an eye on competitors, if they are really suffering you may see them in bids to customers you are trying to win offer price reductions, some dramatic, or bundling of services for free.  Any of which could threaten your win probability.
4. Suppliers, on who you depend, can also come under pressure.  Pay particular attention to the availability of products and services that are critical to your sales
5. Governments, in severe downturns, can make changes to regulations without the usual consultation of affected businesses.  Of course such changes may have a positive impact on your business but they could equally present a severe threat
6. Large organisations can impose restrictions on subsidiaries limiting their capabilities -ignoring the viability or success of the subsidiary.  Look out for trouble from above!
7. Money in all spending budgets starts being delayed, reduced or cancelled.  This affects not only customers and their ability to place orders but also internal sales budgets for events, promotions and hiring
8. Reporting starts to become more regular and more detailed as business leaders demand to know what is happening to orders you expect to win.  Are they on time or late, are they at the forecast value or lower?  Monthly updates move to weekly and in some cases daily as executives try and balance likely sales revenue with costs to protect the company’s viability
9. Morale of the sales force drops as the trading environment becomes harder.  Salespeople used to regular success can become deterred and defeatist when faced with customers who delay, or need much more compelling reasons to place orders.  Maintaining high morale with an emphasis on training to present quantified business value, planning and activity is vital to win business in a downturn
10. Changing plans, even those involving a major strategic direction, at very short notice can be a sign that a downturn has been identified at a senior corporate level
11. Stopping non core activities indicates a “tightening down” of an organisation, in your customers this may be a forerunner of orders being delayed or cancelled.

Do you know any other warning signs that we can add to these 11?

For a comprehensive discussion of all these points and 15 other sessions check out the online sales leadership course How to protect your topline in a downturn.

Richard Lowe
www.lets-begin.com