Accredit - Making sales people more effective

We're back

noreply@blogger.com (fred.nelson@sales-accredit.com) — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 00:30:32 PDT

It has been a while but we thought it about time we blogged again.

A lot has gone on at Accredit since we last expressed a view on selling,

We see many views expressed on various sites about b2b selling and how to get the perfect sales situation, one that almost guarantees success.

So let us give you our view on what it takes to be really successful

Sales are made when customers decide they have a need and find somebody who can satisfy that need. There are many facets to selling ranging from product portfolio, relationships, understanding of client's business needs, hard work, communication skill, perseverance, focus, belief, confidence and many others. The number one issue in our view is that you understand why your customer wants to do something to change, improve, reduce, increase something inside their business and how they intend to do those things. Until you understand why they want to do something you cannot do or sell anything

So maybe we should not call it selling but something like providing answers, exchanging solutions in return for money.

The latest view on selling comes from the SEC and is about The Challenger Sale. If you get a chance have a read of that and gives us your view on how you might use some of the techniques discussed in what is a very readable book

Our view is that "challenging" your customer may be the right way to go but we would like a wider debate on how you acquire and practice the skills you need to take on your customer's decision makers and challenge their view of their business needs

We believe it takes courage, verbal reasoning skills, confidence, knowledge of their and your business, commercial acumen and absolute self belief to challenge your clients and be successful

We would love to hear your view

It's just a conversation

noreply@blogger.com (fred.nelson@sales-accredit.com) — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 10:34:05 PDT

How did you get on with the task I set you last time - you know go 24 hours without complaining about anything - it's really, really hard isn't it? That said trying it makes you realise how immature we can all be when we complain about traffic jams, colleagues, clients, bosses etc. It is time we all grew up.

This week I am going to hold back on the next part of the ADMIRe model which is about being an Interdependent Team player.

Instead I want to focus briefly on some work I have been doing with a major client recently. This large IT company has embarked on a really fantastic program which they are calling their Sales Academy. Basically over 100 new sales people have already joined and more are on their way

We have been working with the Academy guys on sales skills and helping them gain a Sales Accreditation so that they can get out and see real clients and begin to payback the IT company for the chance to work as a Sales professional in a really exciting market

One of the things that confuses me is why people often turn natural speech patterns and behaviour into something quite unnatural when in front of a client - I guess it could be put down to good old fashioned nerves

Lets be clear guys - a sales call should be a "natural conversation" between two business people. Both wanting the now cliched (but still true) win/win.

Yet when faced with the scenario of talking to a "client" in a sales simulation we use for accreditation some sales people turn their conversation into a mixed, garbled series of monologues rather than a smooth, natural conversation of potentially mutual benefit

So a few simple tips to help you all whether you are running a real sales call or trying to pass an assessment at the end of your sales training:

1. Ensure from the start that your meeting is about your client's agenda
2. Listen, listen, listen to your client when they speak
3. Don't try to sell anything - just have a conversation about potential opportunities that may arise from your clients situation
4. Find out as much as you can about your client and her/his organisation that is useful to you moving forward with the opportunity
5. Embrace "Objections" - it is your client's way of getting you to sell

Follow those few tips and you will be on your way

Until next time - Good selling

Own up to being Grown up

noreply@blogger.com (fred.nelson@sales-accredit.com) — Sun, 29 May 2011 10:01:45 PDT

It never ceases to amaze me how much we all moan about our lot - me included.

I will now set you possibly one of the most difficult tasks you have ever been set - try going 24 hours without moaning or complaining about anything. Sounds easy but i tell you it is very, very difficult

This is possibly what appears to be the simplest of all actions to take yet when you try to achieve it is one of the hardest things to do.

I want you to spend 24 hours, yes just a single day where you do not complain about anything. That’s it. That’s the exercise. Spend a day not complaining about the journey to work, the weather, your football team’s result, last night’s TV, your colleagues, your job, your next sales call, your clients, in fact no complaining about anything whatsoever. No using "victim" language. No moaning. No nothing that is negative.

Instead use positive MATURE language that reflects your healthy view of what you can achieve. A positive outlook, a view of what obstacles are in your way and a grown up method for dealing with anything that hits you.

Two things will happen:
1. You will be amazed at how difficult it is
2. You will be amazed at how much you can get done when you focus on being MATURE about dealing with anything and everything

This blog is about the M in our ADMIRe model - Maturity

The key aspect of this element of the model is that we are all responsible for our own lives, our own thoughts – everything we do, we do to satisfy our own emotional needs. The ones we need satisfied at the time we make a decision to do something.

Blaming others, using “victim language” like – “it was not my fault”, “I have to”, “I was only following orders” is an excuse. It is an excuse for not being responsible for your own actions

A simple way to explain this is the “Event – Stimulus – Response” model. Something happens, it stimulates a thought in our minds and we respond or react.

Fact - we are responsible for our own emotions, nobody else. We choose how we respond to a situation based on our emotional needs at the time

These choices we make can be based on our own view of moral responsibility or duty. They are still our choices, based on our emotional needs at the time.

Whether your actions are “for good” reasons or whether they are poor (for example blaming someone else for the situation and doing nothing about it) they are still your actions based on your choice of satisfying your emotional needs.

So we all have the choice to do what we do. Nobody can make you feel guilty or responsible. There is no such thing as sacrifice

You make decisions based on your present emotional needs. You always have. You always will.

Neither is there any value in you being a “victim”. Make a point of not complaining ever about the choices you make and actions you take – it’s up to you.

The good news is that, rather like a vintage claret or cognac, our emotional MATURITY gets better with age. What matters is that you use your experiences to shape how you respond to situations – remember it is not necessarily what happens to you that it is important, it is how you respond to what happens to you that counts.

The great news therefore is that MATURITY enables us to have control over our thoughts and therefore our outcomes

Use this part of the ADMIRe model to focus on how you approach your sales calls. Own up to being Grown up about your own success. A healthy pipeline and great sales results will be the outcome. When you hit a difficult time make sure you do not blame anyone or anything for the circumstances and outcomes.

If you act with MATURITY in a grown up fashion then you are more likely to overcome your difficulties and get back on to the road to success. Dont' forget to LEAP over any obstacles

Next time we will look at the "I" in the ADMIRe model - that is for Interdependence or teamwork.

Speak soon and Good Selling

LEAPing Obstacles

noreply@blogger.com (fred.nelson@sales-accredit.com) — Mon, 16 May 2011 07:12:03 PDT

Where have you been I hear you say across the virtual world. Back in February I was talking about the ADMIRE model and had just got to talk about D for Desire and setting goals when suddenly I disappeared, as did Mark, my Co-Director in Accredit.

Well, no excuses, we have not performed our blogging tasks for almost 3 months and have left you hanging on like a weekly cliffhanger at Saturday morning cinema (ask your Dad/Mum)

Last time we said we would introduce you to how you could overcome obstacles by using our LEAP model (do you get it? - you can LEAP obstacles!)

Ironic isn't it, I am just about to tell you how to LEAP obstacles and I let the little obstacle of being very busy with Clients get in the way (you know who you are and thank you so much for your business and kind words of feedback for us)

So what is LEAPing obstacles to do with being successful at selling? Well, whilst we are busy setting our goals and planning our work we often hit a metaphorical brick wall. Something that is in our way. Something that stops us from progressing. Some apparently insurmountable problem that is so daunting that it makes us think that our plan must be rubbish and our goal unattainable because this immovable object is in our way.

Good news folks - we can LEAP obstacles put in our way

Here's how

LIST issues, problems, hurdles that get in your way - for example lack of information, changing timescales, lack of money, lack of resource, lack of knowledge and skills, lack of customers to talk to.

EXTRACT those things that are insignificant or that you can do nothing about - for example client changes timescales for her own business reasons, you lose a team member to another project, your sales budget is cut by 20%. Accept it if you can do nothing about it or it is meaningless. Move on.

ACTION those things that you can do something about - do more research, find replacement resource, get more for less with the budget/time you have available, learn more about your client's problems and her business

PROGRESS towards your goal with activity everyday until you have achieved it

Successful salespeople have many attributes. One is that they are not victims. They do not complain when something goes awry or when circumstances outside of their influence or control change. They get on with what they can influence, affect and action and they make progress on their plans and goals every single day until they achieve what they set out to do.

Being focused, having a positive attitude and having positive thoughts leads to positive actions, results and outcomes.

You too can LEAP over your obstacles if you focus on your goals and believe in yourself.

Next time we are going to talk about how being "Grown Up" is vital to your success

Thank you for your attention - apologies once again for being "off the air" for so long

You have to want to succeed

noreply@blogger.com (fred.nelson@sales-accredit.com) — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 10:02:13 PST

Last we introduced the ADMIRE model and how the first element attitude determines our approach to selling.

The second element of the ADMIRE model is DESIRE. This is about having purpose, about having targets to achieve, goals, objectives, call them what you will.

Can you, if asked, explain to someone succinctly what your key goals are for the next month, the next year? If you can then well done – you are in a tiny minority of people who have thoroughly thought through and planned goals. Less than 5% of sales people have written down goals that are regularly updated to reflect the latest achievement.

What are your personal earning goals for this year, next year?

Having the “right”ATTITUDE and combining this positive way of thinking with a set of written down, achievable goals that you strongly DESIRE is a very, very powerful combination.

We have already talked about habits in previous blog posts. Over 95% of what we do is habitual – managed and controlled by your subconscious without you thinking about it. Think about it – you walk, talk, eat, drive, without thinking too much about it. You have programmed your mind and body to work together to make these every day things just happen. Yet to achieve these everyday things we are using less than 10% of the capacity of our brain.

Just think of what you could achieve if you used some of that untapped potential in the 90% of your brain you hardly use, if at all.

Here’s a conundrum for you. Why do you have to really concentrate to do some things yet others, just as complex, you can do literally with your eyes closed.

Try this; close your eyes, now clap your hands together very quickly. Easy and nimble, eh?

Yeah, that is because you can do this through your subconscious, you don’t have to think about it, you just know how to do it. Now use your conscious mind to do something quite dextrous, I don’t know, how about writing the alphabet with your “wrong" hand. You have to focus more, you have to take your time – it is much harder. Your subconscious mind can do the clapping bit thousands of times faster than your conscious mind can write the alphabet with your non-writing hand.

Now here is a really great thing – your subconscious mind cannot tell the difference between a real and a desired event that is really vividly imagined. Now I don’t know about you but I reckon we could use that to help us develop and achieve our goals.

Lets make it simple. Write down your goals in a really, vividly imagined, positive format.Have a look at the table below, We have based it on something non-work based that we want to achieve this year

Goal Setting Table

Start date and Title of Specific Goal

Date and description
Be specific & define timeframe

Date and description
Make it measurable and have a timeframe

Planned Completion Date

EXAMPLE – I am working on achieving a 16 handicap at my Golf Club. Beginning 01/09/10

I have booked 6 lessons, I play at least one round each week

I am committed to practicing every weekend during the winter at the range and on the golf course

It is June 1st 2011. I am a 16 handicap golfer, playing every week at my golf club. I am regularly congratulated on my game. I am happy, very happy

NOTE:-
Review progress regularly. Adjust as necessary, habitually review every Saturday morning
You have to believe they are really achievable and worthwhile
Acknowledge wins as you go and reward your self, e.g. moving from 20 handicap to 19

So what does this all mean? Well in terms of achieving something you really want to do it gives you a structure, it gives you a set of achievable but stretching goals. It launches you forward towards a time in the future, one you have already vividly imagined, one where you are happy and have accomplished what you set out to achieve.

Now you could say "what about if I encounter problems on the way?" Well, guess what? That is the subject of next week's blog. It will be entitled "How to LEAP over obstacles" where I will show you a simple model for overcoming all of those nasty conscious and sub conscious thoughts and attitudes that mentally get in the way of achieving something worthwhile

We have identified a number of techniques that you can use to help you plan your goals and use your DESIRE. We will share some of these thoughts on our LinkedIn group Selling - Keeping it simple and effective which you can access if you click here

If you do not ADMIRE yourself who else will?

noreply@blogger.com (fred.nelson@sales-accredit.com) — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 14:31:56 PST

Last week we talked about the fact that "you own the solution to all your problems". So what did we really mean by that?

Over and over, when we have assessed sales people we have noticed that many lack self confidence, even those who are fairly successful.

To understand how you can overcome your lack of self confidence, we have created a model that will help you. It is called the ADMIRE model

Over the next few weeks we will reveal all.

This week the focus is on "A" the first letter of the model. A in this instance stands for ATTITUDE.

The “right” positive mental attitude is the primary reason why some people appear to be more successful than those whose mental starting point is one of a half empty glass.

Earl Nightingale said that Attitude is the single most important word in our language. It is the starting point for every action we take. Attitude drives the way we think. People that think positively, with a can do attitude, are more likely to succeed.

The Quality of your Thinking determines the Quality of your Life

You may not be what you think you are but what you think, you are

“There is nothing either good or bad but only thinking makes it so”

Shakespeare

So if thinking is so key to our success then it follows that “better” thinking will lead to better results and outcomes.

Stephen Covey said that everything is created twice – first in the mind then as an action. If you have “good, positive thinking” then you will be more likely to have good, positive outcomes.

Being positive about yourself, your life, your work, your goals is not easy for everyone. You may need to join your own personal “mental gymnasium”. Just as you have to work your body to improve your physical health, so you have to work at being mentally strong – both in terms of how you exercise your mind and what mental diet you follow.

The great guru of positive thinking was Earl Nightingale. Look him up on You Tube. Simple to understand, easy on the ear, he describes the “Strangest Secret” which is that “we become what we think about most of the time”. If we believe we can do something we are more likely to achieve it than if we start negatively with a belief that it is beyond us. Optimism and pessimism have a very powerful effect on our success, our results, our outcomes, our lives.

Emotional Intelligence is key here. It does not matter from which social or educational background you are. What we are talking about here is that positive attitudes are absolutely vital to our emotional wellbeing and our success irrespective of where we come from.

We have identified a number of techniques that you can use to boost your self esteem, whilst avoiding becoming "boorish" about your success. We will share some of these thoughts on our LinkedIn group Selling - Keeping it simple and effective which you can access if you click here.., and would like to hear how you ensure you think positively about what you can achieve.

Next week we will look at the D of DESIRE!

We look forward to hearing from you

You own the solution to all your problems!

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Savinson - Accredit Ltd) — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 14:02:32 PST

Did you realise that the biggest thing that holds you back is your self belief that you can achieve virtually anything you set your sights on. Before you all groan and think to yourself, not the same "self improvement" message, we are not talking about self confidence, we are talking about taking control of what you want to achieve, and owning the steps to that success.

Over the next few weeks we are going to examine how we take ownership, what that means in terms of the individual and their managers, and some techniques that can help you set achievable objectives and then own the success of achieving those objectives. Or to put it another way - help you earn more!

Why should I own my own success?
We have frequently stated that sales people should create their own business plans, not solely rely on the targets and objectives set by others. The most successful sales people are those who know what they want to achieve, have a measurable definition of that as a set of objectives and goals, and can articulate the steps they have to take to attain them.

The challenge of any sales person working for someone other than themselves is that they have the safety net provided by the company - whether it is the initial guarantee, or a high basic, or even the "house accounts". These all contribute to sales people letting the company define their destiny, when success does not arrive it is not their fault, they did not own the success in the first place.

This is not as rare as you might think. How many sales people who can live off their basic, fail to achieve target?- their is no consequence of failure, they do not have an objective that they need to achieve - THEY DO NOT OWN THEIR OWN SUCCESS

Look at the alternative, an "entrepreneurial" sales person. They have to own their own success, no sales means no money. But they don't just want to own "enough" they want to earn more than that. They want a new car, a bigger house, a luxury holiday, a more successful business, happy clients etc. Ask them what they want and they can clearly articulate it. Once they know what they want they then achieve it, "they become driven to succeed"

That's all well and good, but shouldn't my manager be trying to make me more successful?
If you are thinking to yourself "the reason I work for a company is that I like the support the company gives me", I have some bad news for you, as a sweeping generalisation those in the "sales effectiveness" world agree SALES MANAGEMENT IS FAILING.

Not enough coaching takes place, in fact currently sales managers, understandably, are so focussed on keeping their own jobs and managing their managers they are spending even less time, if that was possible, on helping their people succeed. How often have you heard your manager say, I haven't got time to do the 1-2-1 as I have been asked to produce a new forecast/report?

Now is the time to take control of your own destiny!
If you look around you, you will see many sales people earning more money than ever before (perhaps not as much as bankers though!). They are achieving this because now, in “difficult times” is the time when good sales people achieve their greatest success, when selling is truly the difference between winning and losing a deal. What do these people have in common? The answer is that they have taken control of their own destiny.

We are going to provide you with the techniques to do the same:

Learn how to overcome the barriers to success
Take control of your own objectives and achieve more
Turn your manager into a coach to help you
Build your own plan to achieve success

We want to hear from you along the way so we have created a LinkedIn group where we can share our thoughts and experiences, but not sell! You can find the group by going to LinkedIn and searching for the group Selling - Keeping it simple and effective or click here

Our initial question to everyone is what are the top 3 barriers to your success.

How do you ensure your Sales Assessment programme is successful and provides ROI?

noreply@blogger.com (fred.nelson@sales-accredit.com) — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 02:37:57 PST

In our last two blogs we have outlined our view on Sales Competency models and how you identify whether your sales people have the skills necessary for you to be successful.

This week we are focusing on how you can ensure measurable Return on Investment (ROI) from a Sales Assessment programme and how you actually assemble and communicate a programme that will ensure success for the Sales Management team and the sales people too.

The first point is to decide beforehand what you are going to do with your competency assessment results once you have them. This is vital because by beginning with the end in mind, it provides you with a platform for planning the rollout of the programme, how it is communicated and "sold" internally and helps you to focus on what you can do to improve your sales team once you have assessed them.

Putting your sales team through a series of competency assessments, both online and face to face sales simulations is potentially a stressful time for the sales team. Think about it - you are really saying to the team "we want to know if you can really do the job we are paying you for".

The first thing to do once you have decided on the format and structure of your sales assessment programme is to communicate it clearly to the sales team. Outline the purpose, clarify the objective and state simply how the programme will run and what will happen, when it will take place and most importantly what happens after the competency assessments have been completed - both for those that pass the assessment and those (maybe even more importantly) that do not. The single worst thing you can do is run the programme and then not have a development programme (or exit strategy) for those that do not live up to expectations.

A sales assessment programme, using competency models and quizzes to understand skills and knowledge it exactly that. it is a programme to assess current skills and knowledge. It will not tell you how your people actually perform in front of customers. In the same way that psychometric testing is about understanding personality types and characteristic traits a competency model will not per se improve selling in your business

What will improve performance is, having assessed the team and identified development needs, then working together the sales management team and the sales people work on adopting behaviours that improve performance until they become habits.

Our top ten tips for improving sales performance post a competency assessment programme are:-

Clearly communicate from the start why you are running the programme, what it involves and how the results will be used to improve selling behaviours
When rolling out the programme ensure all managers brief their teams on it's importance and encourage participation
Make it relevant to the sales people - both in terms of content of online quizzes and in terms of sales simulations
Provide feedback and coaching to all participants immediately after any face to face sales simulations
Use competency models that provide an output that you can use to improve selling - for example if you want to improve close rates then test closing capability in the sales simulation
Ensure Sales Managers are bought in and that they take on the responsibility for coaching and development of the team on an ongoing basis
Test regularly - not once every 5 years. Competency based assessments should be deployed every time a new portfolio item is launched or when there is a perceived dip in sales performance
Use the results of the programme to improve sales performance not as a big stick or threat of dismissal
If you need to run training courses as a result of gaps found in sales capability then re-assess skills and knowledge as part of the training course
Always remember the customer is the most important aspect of your sales process. Involve your customers by finding out what they think of your sales team's performance and build in their views into your competency testing

As ever we are really interested in your views and comments so please tell us what you think of competency models and give us your stories around what has and has not worked for you.

So how do I identify if my people are any good?

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Savinson - Accredit Ltd) — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 14:40:02 PST

Having defined your sales competency model, as explained last week, our focus now shifts to how you measure people against the target competencies.

Measurement of knowledge is easy - "test them"
Without putting too fine a point on it, the easiest way to to understand your people's knowledge is to test them. Simple quizzes are an ideal way to identify what people know - here are three things to consider:

Ensure the quiz is relevant to the sales person - Don't expect them to know something that does not help them with making sales, keep it relevant
Ensure that the answers are to be found in content they have access to - don't set people up to fail
Keep it simple, avoid complex questions, instead ask questions on the types of things a customer, colleague or manager might ask.

Specific skills - Let's do a self assessment

On the face of it, self assessment is ideal for understanding what people think their sales skills are, but remember we are addressing specific skills that are better suited to "test" that have clear right and wrong answers.

What can we test?

Numeracy skills
Literacy skills
Verbal reasoning and communication skills

So what about the rest?

You can self assess on the remaining skills - for example "When preparing for a meeting which of the following do you normally do......". Self assessment for people you do not know is an ideal solution, used as part of the recruitment process it helps identify the candidates potential capabilities.

However, we do have reservations about solely relying on self-assessment when you know the people. Consider this:

How would you react if you knew you were being assessed - would you try and second guess the answer you think people want to hear?
If asked to rate yourself would you over exaggerate or downplay?
Would you try and beat the system?

If you answered yes to any of these you can see why we may have reservations about solely relying on self assessment. Our suggestion is that you should still undertake a self assessment programme, but follow it up with a manager's review where the managers have the opportunity to ask people to justify/clarify their answers. This can result in either downgrading or upgrading.

OK so I have tested skills and knowledge, what about attributes?

Use a specialist who will measure the attributes (often through a psychometric test) of individuals. But remember, do not just take the "standard" sales person attributes, include your organisational culture. Many large organisations recruit "rain makers" in the hope that they will bring in large deals. These people have all the attributes of a great sales person, but invariably they leave within a year having had little impact. Why does this happen? Because they do not fit in culturally - they want full autonomy, but culturally the company cannot deliver that!

You now have a picture of your people - map it against your target roles.

Remember your are assessing people against a competency model made up of Knowledge, Skills and Attributes, you should be able to map people against the target "skylines" for their roles.

But all you have found out is what your people are capable of, you do not know if they do it when under pressure - in front of a client.

Objectively assess your people doing their job

We are not suggesting anything radical here, if you were putting your people through a vocational NVQ you would expect to review people doing their job. Selling is the ultimate vocational job, success is in the doing not understanding the theory.

To effectively assess "the doing" part of selling consider the following:

Assessment must be consistent so create an assessment schema that everyone uses - build different schemas for the key parts of the sales cycle
Get managers to run the assessments - they need to understand what people actually do, only then will they take responsibility for coaching
Don't set people up to fail, initial assessments should be based on role play.
Use real customer scenarios for the role plays - this is practice before they see the customer
Be brave, if people are below the required standard don't let them near the client, you only get one chance to sell.

Should you use just one supplier?

We would always suggest you look at best of breed suppliers, but you ought to have a single assessment repository. Remember you are assessing people against a competency model, therefore you need to map the results against this model, link the results to a development plan and ongoing coaching.

We are clearly biased on this view, but we have just rolled out an assessment programme for a global organisation that has used three different sources for assessment content. The company created their own sales skills and product knowledge test, they used a third party for the attributes and we provided the assessment engine as well as the observational assessments. The result is that they have gathered a rounded view of their people, managers are being encouraged to coach their people based on the results and they are mandated to do regular observational assessments.

We can show you the assessment tool

You can see an example of observational assessments by going to our generic assessment tool - www.esquaredm.com Log-in with e-mail address trial@trial.com and password trial. If you would like a demonstration of the fully integrated assessment tool including knowledge test, skills assessment and attribute measurement contact us via e-mail (mark.savinson@sales-accredit.com or fred.nelson@sales-accredit.com) or call Mark on +44 7782 162300.

Next week we will look at what you need to do to ensure that your programme is successful and delivers a measurable return.

So what is an effective competency model?

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Savinson - Accredit Ltd) — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 15:10:29 PDT

Firstly, thank you for the feedback we received, please do keep contacting us as it is important that the work Fred and I put into this does not only reflect our personal experiences.

So what is an effective sales competency model?
I have a simple definition for you - a description of what a high performing sales person does in order to sell to your customers. There is a key phrase in this definition - sell to your customers. The sales competency should not be generic, it must reflect what is required to sell to your customers. Whilst there are some standard components, key for an effective competency model is to reflect the buying style of your customers.

Let me give you an example: There is no point in creating a competency model that is assessing sales people against a complex, consultative sales approach, when your customer base is transactional and is looking for the easiest buying process - differentiation is in the ease of placing orders, offering simple up-sell and cross-sell opportunities and providing a consistent and timely order fulfilment.

The reason I emphasise the need to reflect your environment is that it is this that differentiates between a sales competency model and an effective competency model. I feel I should apologise for stating the obvious, but if you are investing time, effort and money in building a sales competency model, it must add value, provide a structure for coaching your people to be better and ultimately drive sales.

So what should the components of this competency model be?
The ultimate sales competency model should show direct links to your sales engagement model. It can be broken down into the following parts:

People attributes - We all know that there are specific attributes we look for in a successful sales person; resilience, challenging, self motivated, success focussed, etc. The mix of these attributes will vary between the roles within your sales organisation and the complexity of the sale. Please do not forget your organisation's culture, you should be looking for people who "fit" and as such there are certain attributes that you should be identifying that makes for a good fit. Remember, the occasional maverick sales person who achieves their number may be fine, but you cannot have a team of them.
Specific skills - This is not just the obvious sales skills, but should include areas such as numeracy, literacy and also some less obvious such as collaboration skills, speaking skills, and management skills
Knowledge - Clearly sales people need to know stuff - but what is that stuff?

Product knowledge - The key features and advantages of the portfolio
Market knowledge - What is driving customers, what problems do they face and how does the portfolio help them solve these problems?
Sales process knowledge - There are key processes that the sales person should know about, either linked to a specific sales methodology or to the way in which you operate.

The ability to do - If you just measure Knowledge, Skills and Attributes, you have successfully identified people who have the potential to be an effective sales person. However I would suggest you should go beyond potential and find out what they really do. Therefore we recommend that your competency model should include measurements of how the sales people actually behave. Think it as the difference between the driving theory test, the driving test and then actually driving. As a parent, like many others, the minute my sons passed their driving test I wanted to go on a long drive with them to see how they drove once they had passed the test. Of course it was different, but key was to ensure that the differences reflected the needs of driving in the local areas as opposed to the driving test route.

But whose Competency Model should you use?

There are a lot of external competency models that are based on extensive research of sales people in many continents and they are especially effective in identifying specific attributes of successful sales people along with benchmarking specific skills against a wide population of sales people.

These are very helpful as they provide a level of external validation of "what good may look like". But as I pointed out earlier, an effective competency model needs to be personalised to your environment and the requirements of your customers. A purely external model, whilst useful will not deliver the increase in sales that a tailored model will give you.

It is also worthwhile learning the lesson of many organisations who buy in a competency model without the support of sales management is that these all ultimately fail to deliver the desired results. Why? Because they do not reflect the sales management style that exists within the organisation. The result is that sales management undermine the competency model as they drive alternative behaviours.

So in answer to the question "whose competency model?" - Yours, a combination of external (off the shelf) and tailored to reflect your "uniqueness".

A request - Don't forget to link the competency model to coaching

Having a competency model does not improve sales performance in itself
Knowing what your people look like against the competency does not improve sales performance
To improve sales performance you have to get people to do what the sales competency is driving towards.

Too many people think that benchmarking against a competency model will automatically mean people improve. They won't!

The only way to get the return on your investment in defining the competency model is once you have benchmarked your people you have to be prepared to coach people to behave in the required manner. To make this easy you need to identify how you move people along the competency model as you are defining the model.

Before you run off scared that this means an expensive training programme, it does not. Your sales managers should be able to coach their people, you just have to provide the tools.

We want to hear from you

Please share your experiences of building a competency model. If you are a sales manager, a sales rep, or a sales director, we would like to understand what lessons you have learnt.

We do not want anything complicated, just the answer to 3 questions

What did you measure?
How did you measure it?
What did you do with the information?

As we are only talking to sales people we know you will want something in return.

We will put the names of all those who respond into a "virtual hat" and then provide them and up to 8 colleagues with a free assessment and coaching on their approach to selling.

Send us your responses now!

Either add a comment to the blog and share it with others, or send us your thoughtsdirectly by email to either mark.savinson@sales-accredit.com or fred.nelson@sales-accredit.com.

Next week we will look at how you how to measure people against the competency model

Competency models and assessment - Where do we start?

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Savinson - Accredit Ltd) — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 22:53:23 PDT

We have been promising for a while that we would start to look at a subject dear to our hearts, competency and assessment. Rather than immediately going into one of our normal tirades over what people are doing wrong, we wanted to start with some definitions and to get some feedback, either via the blog or directly.

Let's start with what a competency model is and why we might need it?
Here are some definitions that Fred and I hear when we are talking to clients, we would be interested in your thoughts.

A definition of the attributes we want our sales people to have
A combination of the attributes and knowledge we expect our people to have to be successful as sales people
A set of attributes, knowledge and skills that we are looking for in our people
A definition of what a world class sales person looks like
A definition of what we expect our people to do in their role, what they need to know and how they need to behave to successfully fulfil their role
A set of people skills we can measure

The above are all definitions we have been given by both prospects and existing clients. Once we have heard what they think they are looking for in a competency model, we then ask them what they want to do with it?

Use it for recruitment
Use it to identify "high flyers"
Use it to identify "people in the wrong job"
Create a definition of what good looks like
To create a "world class" sales organisation
Because our competition is doing it

Of course it is really important to find out who the competency model is for, i.e. what are you going to do with the results?

For HR to benchmark people
For Learning & Development to see what training is required
For Learning & Development to validate the effectiveness of training
For the Sales Director to see what their team looks like
For the individual sales people to understand what they need to look like to be better at their job.

We would like to know what you would want from a competency model?

Rather than immediately tell you what we think, we would like to hear from you. How will a competency model help you? If you are a sales manager, a sales rep, or a sales director, we would like to understand what value you would like to gain from being assessed against a competency model.

We do not want anything complicated, just the answer to 3 questions

What would you like a competency model to tell you
How would you like to be measured against the model
What would you like to do with the information.

As we are only talking to sales people we know you will want something in return.

We will put the names of all those who respond into a "virtual hat" and then provide them and up to 8 colleagues with a free assessment and coaching on their approach to selling.

Send us your responses now!

Either add a comment to the blog and share it with others, or send us your thoughtsdirectly by email to either mark.savinson@sales-accredit.com or fred.nelson@sales-accredit.com.

Next week we will look at how you create an effective competency model

Why do people buy?

noreply@blogger.com (fred.nelson@sales-accredit.com) — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 10:15:37 PDT

Been a hectic couple of weeks so sorry there has been no blog from Mark or me since early September. At the end of our last blog, we promised to write a blog on Competency Models. Well that is going to have to wait at least one more week because this week we wanted to talk about some fundamentals of selling and buying.

Pretty simple question this week - "Why do people buy?"

There are a couple of threads at present on some of the LinkedIn groups about salespeople needing to understand their own business and that of their clients really well if they are to be successful. Of course we agree - if you do not understand your own business, your portfolio, your key metrics and if you do not find out that information about your clients then you will struggle to convince people to buy from you.

But let's go back to the very simple question of "Why do people buy?"

Our view is as simple as the question. People buy for their own reasons - it is that simple. People buy to be better off as a result of making the decision to buy something. In a B2B world it may seem that your customer buys your product to solve a problem and of course that is true - to an extent. What is certain is that the decision maker will have more than just logical, business reasons for buying from you. There will be all of the emotional reasons tied up in the decision too. These are "their own reasons".

So what are "their own reasons' and how do you get to understand them?

Well guess what - we are back to one of our favourite subjects - you get to understand "their own reasons' by asking great questions and really listening to the responses. By the way I saw a great line last week which read "Listening is not the same as Waiting to Talk".

So listening, really deeply listening will uncover "their own reasons".

So when a CFO says to you "I may buy from you if you can save me some money" that sounds like an obvious thing to say for a CFO doesn't it? But if you can get deeply into his/her personal needs for saving money (looking good in front of the boss, saving our business from disaster, not repeating that mistake I made last year, earning my bonus by saving the business £s, etc, etc) then you are truly getting to "their own reasons"

So bearing in mind all buying decisions are emotional and for the personal reasons of the buyer we want to remind you of some basics:

Always ask questions that get you closer to the real, emotional, personal reasons for wanting to solve a business problem
Talk about the benefits to the customer of buying your products.
Do not talk about your products.
Ensure that your client is emotionally better off by buying your product
Listen intently to uncover the real "hot button" emotional reason for wanting to solve a particular business problem that can be addressed through the benefits your product brings

As always we are interested in your views so please post a comment

Do you want to know more?

Either read our Helping business drive sales document or contact either Mark Savinson or Fred Nelson and let Accredit help you create and manage your solution assessments enabling you to ensure your sales organisation is maximising the opportunities your portfolio creates.

How do you handle your own environmental changes?

noreply@blogger.com (fred.nelson@sales-accredit.com) — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 14:13:53 PDT

We have talked about "the environment" quite a lot lately. But we are not concerned here specifically about greenhouse gases and CO2 emissions (we are really and generally but if you follow us regularly, which many of you do, you will know that we are actually talking about the corporate environment we all work within)

We have recently related to you some of the issues that our clients are having to handle at present. Whether it is how to define a winning go to market strategy for a new proposition or how to handle the fact that there is constant change and uncertainty in a large organisation.

What we are very conscious of, both as sales-people (where we are trying to sell to our customers) and advisors (where we are helping drive the effectiveness of the sales and marketing teams), is the impact a perceived negative environment has. Whether it is decision makers failing to make decisions (no point re-org coming soon) or managers seeing everything as an initiative (they are like buses, if I ignore this one, another will come along shortly), the environment is often used as an excuse for inaction. As I am sure you have noticed, here at Accredit our philosophy is all about the doing - turning new behaviours into habits. For this to happen, inactivity is not an option.

Suffice to say that s*** happens and we all have to deal with it, remain focused and get on with the job. It is within your own power, at what ever level in the organisation you are, to do the right thing. As Brian Tracy would say, you are the CEO of "Me corporation" if you want to make a difference, then you have to do something about it yourself.

So if any of are you are currently going through a period of uncertainty or of rapid change then here are a few tips that will hopefully help you focus on driving "Me corporation" forward.

Change is constant. It is a fact of life. Accept it and focus on your job
We would all like to be in control, but there are some forces greater than us (usually the spreadsheet departments). Focus on your areas of control, they are your sphere of influence. For all the external issues you need to decide if they are Important and/or Urgent and prioritise accordingly.
Don't just change for change sake, link the change to your personal goals. By doing this, you can ensure that the environment works in your favour
Align your personal goals to the corporate strategy, this means that your success is directly linked to the organisation's success. You cannot have a Win/Win for You/The company without you both being aligned to a set of common goals
Being in sales we always have goals - to hit our targets. Focus on those irrespective of what is going on around you. If every salesperson spends every day taking action to hit their target then the organisational environment will, as if by magic, sort itself if the numbers are achieved.
Convert your goals into a plan, objectives and actions. Is everything you are currently doing enabling you to achieve your targets (irrespective of what is happening around you environmentally)?
Are you hitting your sales call targets? The more people you see the more chance you have of qualifying in some good prospects.
Are you going in to see customers with a great interpretation of your organisation's key marketing messages? Are you making these relevant to your customer's situation? When we are in organisational turmoil and a lot of change the fundamentals of selling become even more important.

We regularly see cases of effective people who succeed "in spite of the environment". These mavericks are the high performers in dysfunctional organisations, but they are impossible to replicate. However, we can all become good performers in dysfunctional organisations by focussing on doing the right things and investing our time where we will maximise the return, talking to our customers. If we all did this, we can guarantee (and that is not a word we tend to use) that we would all sell more.

Do you want to know more?

Next week we will start to look at - "How to use competency models to improve performance.

Why would your channel sell your product if you cannot sell them the value?

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Savinson - Accredit Ltd) — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 07:35:55 PDT

A regular discussion we are a party to is "our channel partners are not selling as much as we had hoped, or they had committed to". This quickly turns into a conversation about how the channel partner's sales teams cannot sell the products/solutions provided, usually because "they cannot do solution selling!"

Now if you have followed our previous blogs, you will know what our reaction to this is likely to be - Before you blame the sales team (resources), have a look at the message and environment.

The best way of illustrating this is to provide you with two examples we have recently encountered.

We will not sell your offering it does not pass the "Ronseal Test"
We have been working with a client who has a new solution targeted at the SME marketplace and their largest channel partner has been failing to sell it. The initial reaction was that the sales team were just not up to it, but further discussion uncovered the real issue - Perception was the solution did not meet the customer need.

Sales people will not discuss a solution they have no confidence in, and this clearly manifests itself in a channel partner. The sales people have a range of offerings to sell, from a number of suppliers. Why should they take a chance on solution they have no confidence in? Human nature will always drive us to focus on the easiest things. The things we are comfortable with.

Further examination of the situation identified the real problem. The solution was targeted at a particular customer type and if the sales team properly qualified their targets they would have discovered that when positioned to the right customers the proposed solution not only addressed their issues but importantly delivered significant value when compared to the competition.

Interestingly, when we spoke with our client's sales team about the solution they had a similar perception about its relevance, and they too were reticent to introduce it to customers.

What exactly are you asking me to sell?
Here is a second example of an organisation with what they believe is a class leading product that none of their partners is selling in any quantity. In order to understand why, we facilitated a workshop which included product marketing, senior channel managers and technical specialists. The objective was to agree the key propositions that would encourage the partners to sell more of the product.

The workshop ultimately stalled on a key discussion, could anyone define what the product really was and what business issues it actually addressed. Consensus was the product could do anything you wanted it to, but this was of course not helpful to the channel partners. Beyond this, every channel was different in how they wanted to engage and what they were looking for from the product.

There was universal agreement that in the words of Einstein “If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough”. The key action from the workshop was to find a way of explaining what problems the product solves and how this would be of benefit to the partner. There was recognition that this would probably result in a number of messages reflecting the differences in the partners. Linked with this there was also recognition of the need to move away from thinking "sell to" or "sell through" and to start thinking "sell with".

So what is our message to you?
Your channel is just an extension of your sales team, with the same issues of Message, Environment, Resources.

If your sales team cannot articulate the message, why should you expect your channel partners to do any better?
If your channel partner's environment is not aligned to selling your product/solution, why would you expect the sales team to sell it?
Are you making it easy for your partners to work with you? Remember they are not dedicated to just selling your products/solution, you are competing for mind-share constantly
Think "sell with", be part of the solution to selling more.

Do you want to know more?

We’re all doomed - the environment is killing us

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Savinson - Accredit Ltd) — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 07:26:26 PDT

Relax, this is not another doom and gloom blog on global warming, but is of equal importance to all sales teams. Your managers, at all levels, might be facing environmental fatigue, they may have given up trying to make changes.

Environmental fatigue - Is it really that bad?
A manager when asked the question “why don’t you get your Sales Managers and General Managers in one room and get direct feedback from them?” replied, “If I do that as a Senior Manager I would have to make them a commitment that I would take their issues away and do something about them. I'm not able to make that sort of commitment....”

Another manager recently told us that they were under increasing pressure to run with sales cycles even though their bid analysis told them to "no bid" as they could not deliver the solution.

What is interesting about these examples is that the statements were made to our consultants when we were carrying out sales management assessments. In both cases the senior management of our clients’ asked us to assess managers as they felt there was a problem with the capabilities of sales management.

Remember the Emperor's new clothes?
The 2 examples given are classic cases of senior management creating an environment that is not supportive of sales managers, but then blaming poor performance on sales managers. As with the Emperor's new clothes they have not looked at themselves to see if they are part of the problem (and therefore the solution) and no-one feels empowered to tell them, in the words of the little boy “but he’s not wearing anything!”

Senior Management needs to look in the mirror and check that they are not part of the problem. However in order to do this they need to want to see the truth, unlike the Emperor who even when looking in the mirror saw what he wanted to see, a fine set of clothes.

It is only when senior management recognise the influence they have in acting as a barrier for the successful implementation of solutions they have signed off, that sales organisations will change their behaviours. Don’t just take our word for this, Channel Four has a successful programme that is built on exactly this premise - “Undercover Boss”.

A fish rots from the head
As this expression suggests, there is no point looking at the bottom of the chain of command and trying to change it if you have not made sure that the change is supportable from the top.

As we have said in the past, unless you create a supportive environment that will help drive your required behavioural change in sales management and selling styles, you are just throwing good money after bad.

All truly successful sales organisations have a sales culture and environment driven from the top.

So what should you look out for?
Here are 10 symptoms of an environment working against the sales organisation

When setting next year’s targets are the targets based on an economic analysis or just a desire/need for growth?
Do the targets align to the strategic requirements - i.e. can you hit target based on selling legacy product as opposed to the strategic focus?
If senior management meet clients, do they make promises and then fail to follow them through?
Are management closed to a business case of “give me more sales resource and I will exceed target”.
Are you regularly asked for updates to forecasts and reports beyond the pre-agreed frequency?
Are you scolded for forecasting below target - even if it is an accurate forecast?
Are you allowed to "no-bid" on opportunities with key accounts?
Is everyone looking to blame sales for a shortfall in revenue - including marketing, senior managers and anyone else with an opinion?
Does it always feel like no matter what you achieve it will never be enough?
Is short-termism the order of the day and all long term strategic planning goes out of the window?

If that is how it is in your sales organisation then don’t think you are alone. We witness this over and over. Rather than trying to understand what is really causing shortfalls in revenue targets it always becomes the fault of the sales force.

Our experience shows that the environment for the sales team is made up of myriad of elements that can be causing you to miss target.

Yes, sales capability and execution may be an issue. But issues such as the macro economy, the internal processes that either help or hinder effective selling, the strategic focus of the senior decision makers in the organisation and the current cultural “feel” of the organisation will all influence the performance of the sales team.

So what should you take away?
This is a cultural, managerial issue. If fairly senior people believe there is a problem but that they cannot influence or change anything then blaming the sales force is an easy option. A clear, long term, strategic focus with some structural stability and an open culture of clear and honest communication is, in our view, the only way to bring a semblance of belief into the sales force. This has to be aligned with an environment that enables the sales force to sell rather than it being an obstacle.

Do you want to know more?

Product quizzes - Do they help or hinder your sales team?

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Savinson - Accredit Ltd) — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 01:40:39 PDT

Many of our clients ask us to help them run sales team assessment programmes that include a quiz on the teams understanding of their offering. We are regularly asked how best to write the questions for these quizzes, so we thought we would share our thoughts with everyone.

This blog item is designed to provide ideas as to how to approach the creation of a product/solution/proposition quiz that not only tests sales people knowledge but also helps drive effective sales engagement.

What is the objective of the quiz?
As with all objectives think about what is the measurable outcome of doing the test, how will this ensure your sales team can effectively position your offer, qualify an opportunity and drive it towards a successful outcome?

Too often the sole objective of the quiz is to test that the sales person has read (and maybe understood) the sales collateral. This usually results in the questions being more focussed on the content of the collateral than the value of the content itself and how you use it to drive the sale.

We would recommend that the objective of the quiz is “to ensure that the sales person understands what customer problems the offer is designed to address, the key features of the offer, what the advantages of these features are and how they address the customer need, how to qualify the opportunity, the value your solution offers the customer and how you differentiate versus the competition”

Who is your target audience?
If you take our recommendation that the quiz needs to be linked to the sales process, then you have to consider “can I have one quiz for all?” There may be specific levels of detail that you would expect specific roles to have, if this is the case make the quiz role specific.

Try to avoid asking questions that add no value to the role, this will only devalue the quiz in the eyes of the participants.

How should you structure your questions?
If you have a specific sales approach (uncover need, position offer against need, qualify offer addresses need, validate customer sees value in addressing need with your offer, negotiate to a close) then use these steps as the structure of your quiz. This will then help your sales people see the value in the content you are providing and ensure they can use the content at the right time in the sales cycle.

Any structure you use should be relevant to your stated objective. If you need to do a more technical quiz your structure could be around, existing environment, specific technology needs, what the customer must have in place, how to check solution will work, etc.

The golden rules for questions
Remember you are asking a sales person to invest their time in answering a set of questions, something they probably have no desire to do, therefore the questions must be seen to be adding value:

All questions should be relevant and add value to the sales process for the sales team
Avoid pure pieces of information. i.e. 87.3% of people think.....
Focus on the impact of the information contained in the collateral / training - “If the customer has the following need xxxx, which of the features address that need....”
Avoid ambiguity in the questions - do not have any answers which are answered “all of the above”
Group questions together around the key feature/advantage groupings that differentiate your people and your offer and link these to customer needs
Do not ask purely factual questions based on content somewhere in the collateral - answers should not be a test on “have you read the collateral”
Do not feel obliged to ask 20 questions just to have the target of 20 questions, if you can only find 18 relevant questions, only have 18!
Sales people get bored easily, keep the structure of the question simple. Also ensure the quiz does not last more than 20 minutes
You can base questions around a customer scenario, you could even add sound and animation to explain the situation.
If you do any form of ranking questions make it an even number - on self assessment people are most likely to go for the middle answer, so do not give them a middle option

What happens at the end of the quiz?
Have you thought about the payback to the sales rep for investing their time?

If you are positioning the quiz as a test, you can have a pass/fail, but show them where they failed and what the impact of this will be to them - what they need to improve on to ensure they can sell successfully. As an alternative to a straight pass or fail you could have target scores for each section of the quiz and show the results against a target score. This could then be translated into a RAG result.

There should be some value to the sales rep when they see the results. Consider creating some words that explains why each section is important and how best to use the available content to help drive the sale

Point the user at content that could help them improve their knowledge

Have you thought about what happens if the sales rep falls below the required standard, do they re-sit the quiz, if so how quickly, is it the same set of questions, what happens if they fail again?

Success relies on effective communications
The quiz is likely to be part of an ongoing programme associated with the product/solution/proposition. Have you positioned its role?

Communication is key at the very least you need to:

Explain the objective of the quiz and the benefit to the sales rep
Position what you expect the sales rep to do

When the quiz starts / ends
How they should prepare
What happens if they do not do the quiz in the required time frame
Impact of pass/fail

Communicate with sales managers their role in the process - they will make or break the quiz as they are the people who will ensure their people take it seriously
Explain what happens after the quiz, what are you doing with the information, how will it affect the individual sales rep
Do not rely solely on broadcast information, include some personal communications. If you have a strict timetable, personal phone calls to the sales reps (or managers) encouraging laggards to complete the quiz are invaluable.

Do you want to know more?

Are you hiding behind e-mail and missing the chance to communicate?

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Savinson - Accredit Ltd) — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 04:18:36 PDT

During the last week we have helped a client to solve a problem between them and one of their suppliers (not us!). The core of the problem being a lack of expectation management by the supplier and an assumption by the client that everyone would understand the nuances in their e-mails.

E-mail is a good tool for certain things but a poor “instant” communication tool
E-mail is great in certain circumstances, but e-mail is a poor tool for communicating when an issue needs discussion. The people who send the e-mail assume that the recipients actually read it, and beyond that understand what is trying to be communicated. The recipient skim reads it and takes it for what it is a quick way of sending a message, they take everything at face value, something which can lead to disaster.

Just discuss with your colleagues and friends how many issues have been caused by sending an e-mail that has not been thought through. Let's not forget the number of e-mails that have been replied all, forgetting that some of the information may not have been appropriate for all recipients to see.

E-mail is not a letter
If we all took the same time and effort to compose our e-mails as we do if we ever write a letter, then some, but not all of the problems would be reduced. At the very least there would be greater clarity in the message we are trying to deliver. People would spend more time composing their e-mails, clearly thinking about what they want to say and checking the e-mail before they send it. But then that wouldn't be e-mail and we wouldn't be able to use our Blackberries and iPhones.

So what is e-mail?
It is a quick means of sending an update, a request for information, a broadcast communications tool. It is not an effective one-to-one communications tool.

If you want an effective one-to-one communications tool, the killer app is talk to the person either face to face or on the phone or via an instant messaging application!

In fact if you are looking for a quick update mechanism you may find Instant Message or even Skype's messenger solution better than e-mail. At least you know if they are on-line, and can know if they received the message because you can ask for an immediate response.

So how can e-mail cause problems?
Let me take you back to the issue that I described at the start. The supplier had been carrying out a piece of work, fixed price to a deadline. As is always the case there had been scope creep and the supplier thought he was due additional money, so he sent an e-mail. The scope creep was also causing a delay to the project so the customer e-mailed a response to the suppliers e-mail not addressing the money issue, but focussing on the likely delay of the project. Anarchy ensued, the supplier thought the customer was trying to rip him off, "why won't he reply to my issue over money" and the customer was losing faith in the supplier, "this project is running late and I cannot accept any delay”. In both cases they were focussing on the personal issue and getting emotional over it.

The e-mails were part of the problem as both parties thought they had brought up a clear issue that needs to be addressed, and both parties had ignored the other’s issue.

So what fixed the problem?
A 30 minute meeting solved the problem, both parties met, articulated their issue, understood the others issue and came to an amicable agreement. They also recognised that this problem was in part caused by the use of e-mail as opposed to traditional voice communication, talking. 90% of the issues were due to poor communications between both parties and the associated lack of understanding.

It is a great example of Stephen R. Covey’s fifth habit of Highly Effective People - “Seek to understand first then to be understood”.

But what has this got to do with sales people?
How many sales people hide behind e-mail? When asked the question, "when did you last speak to the client?", the answer given is "I sent them an e-mail last week". When asked "what is the status of the opportunity?" how many people say "I am waiting for a response to my e-mail".

If we truly believe people buy from people, then why do so many sales people think that e-mail is a satisfactory means of communication. You need to speak to their customers.

What can be the impact of moving away from e-mail?
One of our major accounts is the EMEA division of a major PC hardware vendor, their people are spread all over Europe. There are lots of e-mails flying around, but if we need to sort anything out we have a very simple process.

We are all on Skype so we can see who is on-line
If we need to speak to the European Marketing Director we send a Skype message asking for a phone call, usually to agree the way forward
If the discussion is going to be complicated we have a quick call and agree a face-to-face meeting.
E-mail is used solely to validate the outcomes of calls/meetings, share updates with a wide audience and collaborate on key documents.

How can you use this message to improve your sales performance?
We have discussed how you plan you account activity in the past, and the topic of "customer facing time" has come up. We would suggest that you introduce the concept of "customer conversation time", allocate time in your day where you pick up the phone and speak to your accounts. You will be pleasantly surprised, not only will you reduce the likelihood of confusion, you will identify new opportunities just by speaking to people.

As an aim you should review whether it is appropriate to send an e-mail and whether you should use an alternative form of communication:

Do you need an immediate response from your communications? - If so call or Instant Message them
Do you need to validate that the recipient(s) have understood the key messages of your e-mail? If so call or arrange a conference call - you can ask them "have you understood this?"
Does your e-mail contain bad news? - Call them and personally deliver the news, it will be easier to manage expectations.
Do you want to get something off your chest? - write the e-mail and then delete it, you will feel better just by writing it down. If it is a serious issue speak to the person, don't hide behind the e-mail.

Do you want to know more?
Either read our Helping business drive sales document or contact either Mark Savinson orFred Nelsonand let Accredit help to enable your sales organisation to maximise the opportunities your portfolio creates.

I can't be asked to write a blog on motivation

noreply@blogger.com (fred.nelson@sales-accredit.com) — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 00:25:40 PDT

Motivation is a strange animal at the best of times. What makes us want to do something or not do something has been studied by behaviourial psychologists and business gurus for decades.

In selling the most important thing you can do is be in front of customers prospecting, asking questions, listening, finding out their problems and showing how your product can help them overcome their problem and provide them with some personal, emotional benefit.

So why do some salespeople complain when they are asked to spend more time with customers? I was recently working with a client whose senior management had set a target for customer facing time. This, in my view, was not a difficult target to achieve but it seemed to be causing a problem for the salespeople who saw it as arbitrary and burdensome. Fancy that a sales force complaining that having to be in front of customers was a problem for them!

To understand the motivation behind this I did some digging. What I uncovered was an emotional set of issues linked to performance management and a difficult set of targets that were stretching in a difficult trading period of economic hardship and uncertainty.

So what did I conclude?

Motivation is a personal thing that is based on your own internal needs aligned in selling normally to an external reward (e.g. earning a bonus)
Given it is personal it is dependent on the individual adapting a set of behaviours to his/her needs
You can have an organisational target that is sensible and based on organisational needs but if it is not recognised by the individual as relevant to him/her then it will create friction and uncertainty and may actually demotivate
When people feel under pressure even the easiest of targets seem impossible to achieve

Talking to the sales managers in this organisation provided me with the opportunity to try to understand what was really happening. The managers take on what was going on was very interesting - their teams felt micro managed, resources seemed stretched after a long period of down sizing and the difficult trading and economic conditions were making their targets even more difficult to achieve

So how can you personally remain motivated when organisationally you feel everything is difficult or even virtually impossible?

Keep the faith. Believe in your ability to remain focussed on what you have to achieve to win business and hit your number
Do first things first - the important stuff like visiting customers, prospecting meetings that have purpose and outcomes and qualifying good quality opportunities comes before any reporting, spreadsheet manipulation or email chain responses
Have a plan and stick to it, adjusting slightly as you go, not knee jerking and changing direction every time there is a slight hitch
Write down your objectives and work on them every day. Understand what makes progress towards your goal of hitting your number.

Being positive and having a set of goals will completely obliterate any issues you may have about target customer facing time. In fact you will find that your only concern will be fitting in all of the customer facing time!

So next time you are worried about being motivated to hit your customer facing time think:-

what actions am I taking to achieve my sales target?
how can I get in front of more decision making customers?
what coaching is my sales manager giving me to help keep me focussed and motivated?
have I reviewed my goals today and ensured I am focussed on achieving those?
what can I do to fit in more customer facing time?

Motivation in selling should be about doing everything you can to provide benefit to your customers. You can only "sell " benefit if you understand your customers needs. You can only understand your customer's needs if you ask them great questions, listen intently and get underneath their emotional demands. You can only get underneath their emotional demands by getting out and talking to them.

Selling activities should be focussed on 3 things -

1. preparing for customer meetings

2. meeting and presenting your ideas based on listening to your customer needs

3. following up to progress opportunities

Everything else is noise and fluff (before you cry foul, writing sales call reports is part of following up )

If you are not motivated enough to visit customers as often as you can then you are probably in the wrong job. Maybe you should do something else - I dunno how about becoming a hermit?

Do we want people who "can" or people who "do"

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Savinson - Accredit Ltd) — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 02:33:50 PDT

This will be a short blog as both Fred and I should have been on holiday this week, the good news is that we have been very busy so holidays have been put on hold in order to focus on our clients. The even better news is that this has given me the opportunity to use my new iPad to write this blog. I have only had my iPad 2 weeks and I am just coming to the important decision, toy or useful business accessory. I will let you know in a few weeks.

During the last week we have had a number of conversations with companies on the subject of assessments. They can be neatly broken down into the following issue. What do we want to know, do we identify those people who have the attributes to be a sales person or those people who are selling well.

What is interesting is that the answer depends on who we are talking to. If the lead is HR then they start with the attribute question, "do we have people we can invest our training in who will become world class sales people?" If, on the other hand, we are speaking to the Sales Director, there is a far more pragmatic question, "are my people able to sell in the way I wish and if there are gaps how do I coach the people to improve?"

Attribute or approach
There is not necessarily a right answer, they are both useful. The key question is what are you trying to find out? Here at Accredit we believe that we come from the pragmatic end of the scale. If you have a sales team in place you need to find out what you must do to maximize their performance. This requires an assessment of how they are actually selling and then building a program to address the identified issues (which could of course be environmental or poor messaging). If on the other hand you are looking to overhaul your sales organization a review of their attributes is a valid exercise.

Avoid letting attribute over-ride the doing
Our experience shows that a well motivated team of people who are selling well will always outperform a team of people who have the attributes but are not motivated. Strong and clear leadership is of course essential. The pragmatic approach not only identifies how people sell, but it reveals the state of leadership, especially by showing what they focus on and why.

Warm bodies are still better than no bodies
The other issue we have come across of late is the fact that many of the organizations who are heavily focussing on attribute assessment are linking this to a re-evaluation of their sales organization, a polite way of saying have we got the right people and if not how do we "lose" them. What they often forget is that you still need people to talk to customers and an average sales person talking to 10 customers will always deliver more revenue than no sales person talking to those customers. Again pragmatism must rule, all assessments must be undertaken in association with the strategic objective of the company, the revenue target. It is not purely an HR issue, it is a sales issue.

What do we recommend?
Accredit is recognized for it's pragmatic approach to sales enablement, as such we will always start by focussing on the "can they do?" elements. However, when it comes to recruitment and also talent management we recognize the value of attributes. In fact we do partner with an assessment company who focus on this type of assessment. The difference is that we recommend this approach on a target audience as opposed to the whole sales community. It is also worth highlighting that if you are relying on self assessment for attributes, a key attribute of a successful sales person is confidence, therefore they will exaggerate their abilities!

Do you want to know more?

Either read our "Helping business drive sales" document or contact either Mark Savinson orFred Nelson and let Accredit help to enable your sales organisation to maximise the opportunities your portfolio creates.

Does everyone have an emotional link to doing a good job

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Savinson - Accredit Ltd) — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 02:30:09 PDT

This week we were due to focus on Resources, however during the last week we have recognised an environmental trait that appears to be having a major impact on some of the sales organisations we are working with. The core of this issue is "is it better to have people who expect to be financially rewarded for doing the job, or to have those who have an emotional driver that makes them want to do a good job?"

On the face of it this may appear to be a stupid question as western society has built its commercial success around a reward culture. In fact everyone agrees that a key factor in creating successful sales enablement is a commission plan that drives activities in the right places. So why are we concerning ourselves with this emotional link?

Do you have a contractor led environment?
As a result of the recession many companies have drastically reduced headcount, which has left gaps in their capabilities, which they fill with contractors - people on short-term day rate contracts. This in itself is not an issue but it is for some creating an environment where success is "doing the job I am paid for" as opposed to creating an environment built around success for the company and colleagues. Just imagine what an Apple Store would be like if it was full of contractors who did not have a passion for Apple, it would be just like many other stores - soulless.

So how does this impact the sales environment?
In some cases the contractor mentality is increasing the stove pipe approach to sales enablement. Lots of standalone initiatives, each of which are built on good intentions, but unfortunately are all pulling in slightly different directions. Too often the contractors are put in a position where they are told what they are expected to do (think micro-management) and it is made clear "this is what you are paid to deliver". As such the contractor adds no value, which is frustrating for some and acceptable for others.

The net result is that this stove-pipe initiative approach encourages the sales community to ignore all the initiatives - "if you duck under this initiative don't worry because there will be another one coming along shortly".

How can you ensure you create a positive environment?
Clearly we are not saying "don't use contractors", that would be naive. Instead we recommend that at a management level you have to work even harder to ensure that everything is connected. You have to articulate the end objective and be clear how all the workstreams combine to achieve that objective. If you can do this you increase your chances of success.

Secondly, we suggest you review how you work with your contractors. Have you asked them for a fixed price for the work, focussing them on what you want them to achieve as opposed to "how many days will I be paid for?" If they can achieve your objective quicker, even if the price is fixed, that is clearly a success.

Thirdly, you have to get the contractors to collaborate. If you do not, they will compete for budget and not provide you with a joined up end-to-end solution. Instead you could end up with "world class" initiatives that overlap and confuse the sales community and therefore not achieving the overall strategic objective.

Who controls the answer?
It is important to remember that the sales messages, environment, tools and target sales behaviours are all part of a sales enablement process. They are not separate initiatives but part of a whole solution. They will only be successful if your customer, i.e. the sales team, use them and sell more!

Senior management must own the objectives, not the contractors (even if you out-task), as they are the people who should have the emotional link to solving the problem. But remember, if you are looking for contractors who add value then you need to find those who have an emotional driver to improving selling, (be careful they can be evangelical in their passion and highly opinionated). If you focus them on the end-objective they will be driven to make a difference, this will be reflected in their desire to use project pricing as opposed to day-rate.

If you would rather have bodies who do as they are told, that is fine. Remember that you have to have clarity as to what you want them to do and be prepared for things to take longer than anticipated, you are paying them by the day after all!

Let's return to the environment
As we stated at the beginning, there are two types of contractors; those who are paid to do a job and those who emotionally want to do a good job. We would suggest that when it comes to finding leaders of behavioural change you should always look for the latter. Organisationally if you can create this emotional tie then you will be even more successful, but do not think this removes the need for rewarding success. I am sure Apple pay their employees even though they are so passionate.

Be prepared to ask for help

If you feel our views on contracting in to solve key strategic issues are of interest we would love to hear your views. We can give you quick feedback just by placing a comment on this blog, or we can work with you to ensure you are best placed to start to drive the activities that will help you be successful.

Do you want to know more?

Either read our "Helping business drive sales" document or contact either Mark Savinson or Fred Nelson and let Accredit help to enable your sales organisation to maximise the opportunities your portfolio creates.

How can we ensure our sales people are capable of delivering?

noreply@blogger.com (fred.nelson@sales-accredit.com) — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 14:53:13 PDT

Firstly apologies for the delay in this blog, as we move into the holiday season we are having to update blogs via mobile broadband, in the quiet periods when our wives do not notice we are working. In fact part of this blog has been updated via an iPad.

We will keep the blogs short for the next 2 weeks, so please stay with us until normal service is resumed.

The trinity continued
The third element of our trinity of key components of sales success, after Messages and Environment (which we have covered over the past couple of weeks), is Resources.

By Resources we mean the sales people in our sales teams - whether they be inside sales reps on the desk or face to face account team members and specialist/technical sales people.

If we get the Messages "sales ready" and the internal Environment (processes and systems) right then neither is worth anything without a well trained, highly motivated, highly capable team of sales people. It goes without saying really doesn't it? That said we often see many examples where the sales people - the most important element of all - appear poorly trained, of low motivation and are rarely coached by their team leaders and sales managers.

Why is this? From what we have observed it is a combination of things which when mixed together do not necessarily support overall achievement of the corporate revenue and margin goals

We regularly see:-

Little or no relevant training on current and planned proposition portfolios
Too much focus on portfolio and not enough focus on customers.
Low levels of motivation
Little or no 1:1 coaching of individuals by their sales managers
Lack of clarity around what the focus of their activity should be.

The answer is not "send them on a training course"

Clearly a well trained sales force will be more effective than an untrained sales force. But our experience shows that just by training sales people in generic sales skills is no guarantee of success.

Training is very good at ensuring that sales people (and managers) have the requisite skills to be able to sell. It is important to remember that the training must focus on the appropriate skills for the market you are operating in. Over the last few years we have seen an obsession with the move towards solution or consultative selling, with an ever growing number of sales methodologies promising the golden bullet to selling. However, the focus on the methodology almost undermines the fundamental aspect of successful selling - addressing the needs of the customer! To-date we have never seen a tender document that includes the sales methodology that must be used, and I know of no customer who approaches a sales person and bases their decision to buy on whether they are using the latest "closing technique".

The most effective sales training is based on firstly identifying the most effective way of engaging with your clients. If you are in a transactional environment (where the customer comes with a defined requirement and is looking for someone to fulfil that requirement) then training must be focussed around customer service, speed of response and the ability to up-sell and cross-sell (do you want fries with that or would you like to go large). If on the other hand your clients are looking for you to solve a problem, then you need a consultative sales approach with a focus on uncovering need, addressing the need, proving the value of your proposed approach and negotiating to a close.

In both of the examples, the customer is at the centre of the sale. All selling is customer centric, and your training solution should be too. This is of course not a radical suggestion as, if you have read the previous blogs on the trinity of message, environment and resources, all of our comments can be summarised as "put the customer at the centre of all your thinking, they are the ones who buy!"

Moving from sales training to engagement enablement

We are not a lone voice here, we are currently working with a large mobile communications company and they have launched an up-skilling programme for their sales people. What is interesting is that the suppliers (they have gone for a consortium approach) they have selected are using a blended approach that uses e-learning to deliver the base level skills and then face-to-face sessions that are based on using the skills to engage with clients. For this approach they start with role play and then move onto to monitored live engagement.

What is different about this approach is that all the focus is on engaging with customers and selling something, and not the methodology itself. This enables the suppliers to directly link the programme to an ROI (business won), as opposed to relying on some form of "test" at the end to see what people have learnt.

This approach, in our opinion, is the ideal start point to training a sales team as it ticks the following boxes.

Focus is on doing the job and not a methodology
Everything is in the context of selling the portfolio
It is customer centric as it focusses on engagement (doing) and not theory
Results are measurable, it is tied to selling something
It can be linked to a sustainable approach
Sales managers can continue focussing on the doing

Suppliers alone cannot solve the problem

Training can only show people the most effective way of selling their portfolio. It is up to the organisation to ensure that best practice is used every day. This neatly takes us on to motivation and coaching which we will examine next week.

Be prepared to ask for help

If you feel our thoughts on any aspect of the "trinity" are of interest we would love to hear your views. We can give you quick feedback just by placing a comment on this blog, or we can work with you to ensure you are best placed to start to drive the activities that will help you be successful.

Do you want to know more?

Either read our "Helping business drive sales" document or contact either Mark Savinson or Fred Nelson and let Accredit help to enable your sales organisation to maximise the opportunities your portfolio creates.

How can we ensure our internal Environment enables our selling activities

noreply@blogger.com (fred.nelson@sales-accredit.com) — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 03:10:12 PDT

Over the last couple of weeks we have posted on what we at Accredit Ltd call the three key internal components of sales success - Message, Environment and Resources.

This week we will focus on Environment.

In essence what we are talking about here are the internal environmental issues that lead to sales success - Process, Motivation and Support/Culture. Is it easy for our sales force to sell and our customers to buy our products and solutions? Are our sales people motivated to sell our portfolio and is the culture supportive of great selling habits?

Is it easy to sell what we sell?

This is a key question because it addresses the needs of the seller and the buyer. What we mean by this is that if our internal processes are aligned to ensuring that selling and buying are "easy" then we are likely to sell more and have more satisfied customers. For example if you sell a fairly complex or technical solution you probably need your salespeople to have access to very competent, expert project managers or technical specialists that can support the sales guys through the selling process. If you make it hard for sales to get access to the technical guys then it makes it harder for them to sell and harder for customers to get their technical concerns addressed. If the order handling process is complex or fragmented then the same applies - difficulty for sales and customers instead of ease and smooth professionalism.

Are our sales people motivated to sell our portfolio?
This is not just about payplan and bonus which is, of course, vital to get right when designing a sales remuneration package for a particular campaign, product portfolio or annual sales plan. What is just as important as money in our view are the "softer" motivational issues such as are related to the "ease" of selling we discussed above. If we make it too hard, sales people will be turned off. All of us in sales want it to be as easy as possible to sell; if it is not and we can find another way of earning our bonus then we will be drawn to what is easy.

What is our support culture?

Another 'soft" motivator that is absolutely vital and is something we have blogged about many times over the past year is sales management - how are we managed, led, coached. Is it mostly stick and little carrot? Do we feel happy in what we are doing? Do we feel valued? Are we regularly coached? Are we helped in finding solutions to problems when we are struggling to find answers and to do our best?

Having an internal environment where sales people feel valued is vital, where they can rely on processes and systems to help make the sales "easy". Easy does not mean easy in terms of being allowed to give away discounts; it is more about how the processes enable the order handling, contract signing, service handling etc. to run effectively for both the internal stakeholders and of course your customers.

We asked a sales support team recently what one word describes your organisational culture at present - their answer was damning. "Dictatorial"

This is a very successful major corporate sales team with a history of achievement. The last 2 years have been difficult (just like it has for many companies and sales teams). Culturally when the going gets tough this organisation has fallen into the trap of what we call "blamestorming" - in other words let's point the finger and demand change and improvement in the way a dictator would. The language is typical of organisations in panic mode - "The sales force need more training on products, they are not selling enough, it must be a lack of training". "These sales guys are rubbish" is the sort of thing we have heard over the past few weeks.

As the saying goes "when the going gets tough, the tough get going". In our view that does not mean shouting and pointing fingers. A culturally mature, level headed sales organisation has a leadership focus on understanding why things are not going so well, recognising the issues, thinking through some potential solutions and then executing and measuring the most appropriate solutions. Being "dictatorial" and demanding instant change, more training, more reporting etc. does not solve anything.

Reviewing sales activity and understanding what is going on before leaping into "solutions" is the mature, culturally grown up way of moving forward.

Three things to think about
So our recommendation is whether times are good or bad regularly look at how your selling environment is working.

Make it easy to sell. Align processes and systems to enabling selling so that all internal resources and your customers can easily understand what is happening, what is on offer, what will happen next and when service will be delivered.
Make sure your sales force is motivated. Motivation is about money for sure but it is also about support systems, enabling the whole selling process to work smoothly and having systems that work for the sales teams.
Make your culture one of support and growth. In good times selling seems easy. When times are tough that is when we find out if our support systems for our people and our culture is strong enough to get us through.

An effective message and a sales-oriented environment are just the bedrock

If we get the basics right we remove the excuses, next we will examine the pointy end of the sales organisation; your people.

Be prepared to ask for help

If you are not happy with your approach to your Environment feel free to contact Accredit. We can give you quick feedback just by placing a comment on this blog, or we can work with you to ensure you are best placed to start drive the activities that will help you be successful.

Do you want to know more?

Either read our "Helping business drive sales" document or contact either Mark Savinson or Fred Nelson and let Accredit help enable your sales organisation to maximise the opportunities your product set creates.

How can I sell something if I don't know why someone would buy it?

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Savinson - Accredit Ltd) — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 06:22:34 PDT

Last we we introduced the three internal issues we believe are the key to creating a successful sales team; Message, Environment and Resources. As promised we are going to look at each area in more detail and share some of our experiences of how these have been addressed by successful sales organisations.

The first area we are going to focus on is the Message, which we describe as "sales ready messages". These need to be explicit and to enable customers and sales people to understand them and act upon them. The message is in reality the "WIIFM" (What's in it for me) for all audiences.

We already have Messages, it's what marketing do
We need to be clear from the outset, the Messages we are talking about here are not the standard marketing collateral which are themselves very important. What we are talking about are the tactical and, most importantly practical, messages that sales people should be able to use to engage with a customer, identify if they have a need and quickly qualify whether they are likely to be a prospect. These messages are the sharp end of the sales engagement, a pre-requsite in any end-to-end sales enablement process.

This is not your typical "glossy" or brochure
The easiest way to understand the importance of the message is to give you an example.

A multi-national organisation has decided to run a focussed campaign on promoting their latest "state-of-the art" solution. They have an award winning website that contains a range of information on the product including in-depth technical briefings. The objective of the sales campaign is to get their largest channel partner to initially target their existing customer base to offer them a competitively priced upgrade, with a view to selling additional services and applications on the back of this.

On the face of it they have everything that the sales team need to be able to execute a successful campaign, literature, some slides on potential configurations, the standard corporate presentation, analyst white papers on the value of their solution. Who could ask for more?

Does this marketing literature enable sales people to engage?
When we received the literature we asked ourselves some fundamental questions, the ones that a sales person who needs help would ask.

Can you describe the customer problem we are addressing?
Why would a customer want to upgrade now?
What must the customer have in place to take advantage of the upgrade?
What is the best way of engaging with a customer?

Who is the target audience?
Do I need to meet or can we do it all over the phone?
What sales support do I get ?

How do I differentiate from other solutions?
Is it easy for the customer to buy and for me to sell?

Now on the face of it a good salesman should be able to answer these questions from all of the available literature. But you have to remember the reality of a sales person:

They are being asked to sell multiple products, why should they sell this one?
They have targets to hit, they will always take the path of least resistance
Not all sales people are prepared to invest time to translate the myriad of content into an effective message.
Those who do create their own message may be "off message", but if it works for them why should they care?

When we finished our initial audit of the existing content we discovered some gaps in the content, specifically there was an assumption that a specific technology would be available, it was not, as such all the literature promoted features and advantages that could not be delivered yet.

Interestingly when we spoke to the channel sales team they knew all of this, it was just the product marketing team who were unaware of this. Perhaps they had become too product centric in all their thinking and not customer centric.

So what did we all agree to do?

Create a story that both the sales team and the customer would understand - because we needed to start selling now and could not wait for technology to be available, we built a story that allowed sales to:

Identify specific customer types and map these to specific solutions
Link the solutions to a story that tells the customer what they will achieve in the short-term, medium term and long-term

Devise an engagement process that used an initial call to arrange a meeting whose objective is to review the customer's current solution, identify what needs to be done to meet the current and future needs and then propose a solution
To provide the sales team with specific content for the calls, meeting agenda and structure for the face-to-face meeting, 5-6 slides which can be used in the meeting.
Provide a briefing to all sales people explaining what we are doing, why we are doing it, what's in it for them, how we are helping them.

The customer is very happy with this approach as it allows them to go to market now with a clear engagement strategy which they can measure against. The channel partner is happy as they have clarity as to what they need to ask their sales people to do, and they have all the engagement material.

What can you, the reader, learn from this?

We have learnt a number of lessons over the last five years of putting these types of messages together and here are the top 3

You should not assume that your sales team will analyse the information marketing provide and turn it into "engagement ready" material. You may have a limited number of sales people who do this, but these are the self starters who are already over-achieving against target
You should not assume that marketing will provide this type of material unless you ask for it. Marketing focusses on the two key areas of, Product focussed information and Top level strategic, brand enhancing messages. They assume that sales will connect these to engagement activities. Sales need to ask for help
Think sales engagement when creating the message and keep it simple. Remember, as sales people we will always take the path of least resistance. If it is too complicated it will not be used.

The acid test is do you feel confident to engage with a prospect using the information provided, if not why do you think your sales people will? If you do feel confident then engage with a customer and test it.

Just because you have a good message does not mean sales will engage customers

As we said in last weeks post, having a good message alone will not guarantee success. Next week we will examine what we need to do to focus on getting the right "sales environment"

Be prepared to ask for help

If you are not happy with your approach to your Messages feel free to contact Accredit. We can give you quick feedback just by placing a comment on this blog, or we can work with you to ensure you are best placed to start drive the activities that will help you be successful.

Do you want to know more?

The key components of sales success

noreply@blogger.com (fred.nelson@sales-accredit.com) — Mon, 31 May 2010 13:12:14 PDT

Many commentators have a view on the question "What makes for a successful sales team?"

Here at Accredit, we believe sales success hinges on three key internal issues (assuming of course that you have something people want to buy and have access to the market you are aiming to serve)

Over the next few weeks we will be discussing our views on what these three key areas are. This week we will focus on introducing them and briefly outlining why we think they are important and essential to sales success.

We believe the 3 components to successful sales enablement are:

Message - do you have "sales ready messages" and are they explicit so that both customers and sales people understand them. Think about it as having a "WIIFM" for all audiences
Environment - This in our view is a combination of:

Process - is it easy for me to sell the product/solution and the customer to buy the product/solution?
Motivation - Will our sales people want to sell the product/solution? Typically this is a combination of incentives and sales management (carrot and stick)
Support/Culture - Do we know what good looks like and is there coaching support to get the sales people selling? - Again this is all about Sales Management and organisational appetite for improvement and success.

Resources - Are your sales people capable of delivering the messages and do they have the skills to turn opportunities into business? How will you know? Typically there are different internal resource skill and knowledge levels and therefore the capability and skill requirements differ depending on who sales people engage with and the sales process they use and of course their confidence and attitude towards their role and their own personal success drivers.

Because of the nature of sales people, if you do not get Message and Environment "right", it does not matter what you do with the Resources; you will fail. It's a bit like training someone to drive an F1 car so they can drive very quickly and then giving them a Smart Car and telling them to drive in the centre of London. They will not use the new skills because there is no relevance to what they actually have to do.

Sales Management is also key - Sales Management can make or break any sales enablement process. The sales guys need to be confident that their SM can coach them, support them, motivate them - indeed help them to be successful. It is about Leadership not just Management. Do you have SMs that can do this?

So what does this mean for us as sales people and sales managers?

We believe you should begin with your Messaging components, i.e. Collateral. This is on the basis that until you have the collateral finalised how do you know what you want the sales people to ask, understand, say etc?
Next come the Environmental components. You need to ensure that your sales people have the tools and processes to make it easy to sell (and for the customer to buy) and that you have defined what good looks like for the sales process and how you measure it.
The tools you need to use to ensure success at each stage of the sales cycle and how they are going to drive success are for example:

Opportunity management
Account Development
Sales Planning
Forecasting and Pipeline Management

Finally, and only when you have excellent Messages and the right Environment should you tackle the Resources element. By this we mean it is pointless training in new skills and knowledge unless the other elements are in place first. Often we are asked to train sales people and once we commence understanding what we are getting into we find the first two vital components are missing.
The starting point for the Resources element has to be in sales management. You not only need to train sales people you also need to include checks and balances to ensure sales people are continually assessed and coached in terms of actual performance. The ultimate measure of success for sales enablement is not completing a programme, but achieving the sales figures, this is an ongoing challenge, especially as your portfolio and therefore your solutions to customer problems evolve. Sales Managers are the driver to achieving this. They should properly manage the forecast by ensuring that the good behaviours you are training people in become everyday habits.
By including sales management you turn this from a sales engagement process (what are the steps I as a sales rep should take to engage with a client) into a sales enablement process - how can I ensure we successfully sell the product/solution and hit our numbers.

In summary, Accredit's three keys to successful sales teams are

Messages - Internal Collateral and External Collateral
Environment - Tools (should include order management processes, remember sales people will expect everything to work), Measures and Sales Management
Resources - Skills, Knowledge, Coaching for performance

Over the next few weeks we will explore these in more detail, commencing next week with Messages.

If you are about to commence a review of your sales team, or launch a new product now contact either Mark Savinson or Fred Nelson and let Accredit help enable your sales organisation to maximise the opportunities your product set creates.

Remember, we can give you quick feedback just by placing a comment on this blog, or we can work with you to ensure you are best placed to start drive the activities that will help you be successful.

Just because they asked for a proposal does not mean they will read it

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Savinson - Accredit Ltd) — Wed, 26 May 2010 06:42:21 PDT

In the rush to try and get business have you ever been guilty of thinking that just because you have been asked to send a proposal you assume that the customer will read and understand the proposal before you next meet them? If you have, you are not alone, during the past month we have come across a number of instances where this has happened, including one which happened to us. There is some commonality in the situations we have come across, so we thought we would share them with you and the lessons learned.

A complicated situation rarely translates well to a written proposal
In all of the situations we have seen where the proposal has not been read, or in one case read but not understood, the common situation was that a complex solution to a complex problem was provided. In fact it is fair to stay that in all cases the customer had not been able to articulate the problem clearly, therefore there was no clear, explicit, detailed RFP to respond to.

When we spoke to the sales team and the potential customer we discovered that the customer was using the sales process as the means of understanding the issue and looking for a partner who might be able to help them solve their problem. In all cases they were looking for some form of "emotional favourite" or "trusted advisor" relationship and not an immediate solution.

So why did they ask for a written proposal?
The reality is that a written proposal is usually part of the customer's decision making process, it is a step towards a formal meeting usually with the client and probably others involved in the decision (e.g. procurement, finance or other departments with a vested interest). The reality is that it is more akin to a gatekeeping process that we all have to go through to get to the real issues and potentially the real solution. The written proposal is an integral part of the decision making process as it is often the first document and involvement that the wider decision making team have encountered.

So why didn't they read it?

Remember, that outside of the customer with the issue, the rest of the decision making group do not have a compelling problem that they themselves have to solve. Instead they are a check and balance to ensure the right supplier is chosen and the rules are being followed. The impact of this is that they do not necessarily understand the problem that the proposal is trying to address, let alone the impact of the proposed solution. It is therefore easier for them to decide that the supplier should fully explain the proposal as opposed to reading the written proposal and trying to decode it into language they understand.

As a sales person, you need to understand how influential your customer is, and more importantly how well they appreciate the decision making process of their company. If they understand, and can control the extended decision making group, they can ensure that everyone reads, or at least is aware of what problem they are trying to address and how they would like to achieve this.

What have these experiences taught us?

Here are 6 golden rules we would suggest you follow to ensure that the time you invest adds value to the sales process, and drives success.

Does the formal RFP match the informal discussion you have had to identify needs? If not you need to understand what has changed as you may be in danger of answering the wrong, or only part, of the questions on which final decisions will be made.
Make sure you understand the role of the written proposal in the decision making process. Is it a "check point" or the formal document that a decision is to be based upon?
Send a draft version of your proposal to your contact for confirmation that it addresses the issues.
Validate what your customer wants the formal presentation to address. Always ask if this has been agreed by the other members of the decision making group
Be prepared to run through the proposal in detail at the presentation, even if you were told that they would read it in advance. Just ask them the question!
Just because good sales practice tells you that you should get the customer to do the majority of the talking at a meeting, this does not always hold true. You need to confirm with your contact whether they want a "show and tell" or a discussion around the proposal.

So what were the outcomes?

In all the cases, including ours, the sales team had to go back to their customer to discuss the meeting. In the majority of cases they discovered that there was still confusion as none of the vendors had delivered the "one-stop-shop" solution the wider decision making group was hoping to see. In fact, there was recognition that the RFP and the associated brief for the presentation did not clearly articulate what they were hoping to hear.

To drive the process forward the sales teams went back to basics of "what are you trying to achieve?" By working closely with the customer they were able to to help them better articulate the problem to the wider decision making unit, and then appoint their preferred partner.

So what is our message to you?

The role of a sales team is to help your customer sponsor to have the confidence to make the right decision. Your sponsor may not know how to "work the system" - you need to help him/her. Your relationship, knowledge of the customer's processes and your overall selling skills are key to them getting to the "right" decision. Remember, the formal proposal is only a component of the whole decision making process. Knitting together all of the components is integral to your success.

Be prepared to ask for help

If you are not happy with your approach to dealing with formal proposals, or the final stages of the cycle please feel free to contact Accredit. We can give you quick feedback just by placing a comment on this blog, or we can work with you to ensure you are best placed to start drive the activities that will help you be successful.

Do you want to know more?

Either read our "Helping business drive sales" document or contact mark.savinson@sales-accredit.com and Mark can take you through more detail.

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