Sales Operations Today Blog

Segmenting Customers Is A Sales Exercise

Alejandro Erasso — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 10:00:00 GMT

One topic that is often associated with marketing, and not with sales, is customer segmentation. We believe at Sales Economics that it is equally important in both functional areas. Sales leaders need not go too far to realize it: think of the sales close call. We are sure that there are several questions you explore if your organization ever experiences customers:

deserting you;

reducing their purchases from your company while buying from others; or

simply willing to try competitors’ products and services.

The first question is why your customers do not want to continue interacting with you. So, to answer it, we must remember who those customers are and how you have characterized them until now. Such characterization is the result of your customer segmentation, or the process of analyzing your customer base in a manner that permits targeting specific groups of customers to efficiently and effectively allocate marketing and sales resources that maximize success (regardless of your definition of success).

Challenging the Existing Customer Segmentation

Given that your customers are deserting you, or simply buying less, or prefer to try your competitors’ products and services, then getting the initial “why question” broken down into smaller questions could prove prudent.

Are you dealing with a new kind of customer?

Are you selling the right value to the right customer?

Are complains about limited or inaccurate customer and partner information mounting?

Have you seen unexplained, excessive, or inconsistent financial performance of similar accounts?

All these concerns point to a common issue that needs to be explored. This is the second question: Is the existing segmentation not reflecting what, how, and why customers actually buy?

Segmenting customers can be addressed in two ways. The traditional marketing approach divides a customer base into groups that exhibit similar demographic, psychographic, geographic, or behavioral traits, among others. In other words, this approach relies on pre-defined market definitions (as expressed by Philip Kotler in 2003*)

Traditional Customer Segmentation

This standard customer segmentation often poses real challenges in the field. Defined on demographic, psychographic, industry, and other population attributes, segmentations seldom address the actual decision steps of the individual buyers (either people or organizations) or the attributes that help sales assess their opportunities and price them accordingly. This situation is aggravated later in the field when an assumed customer profile is matched with a channel deployment that does not meet needs and wants of specific customers.

Do you remember the last time your inside sales reps where selling to an account that needed in-person, on the field coaching and support?

Value-Based Segmentation

The second approach to segmenting customers, value-based segmentation, focuses on evidence of how specific customers actually buy (e.g. their timing and frequency of purchases, share of wallet, purchasing sequence, pricing power, etc.) in order to qualify accounts and align sales channels to them. It is in essence an application of bottom-up marketing principles in order to align resources to customer value perceptions (and actions).

Value based segmentation relies on evidence from transaction history. At Sales Economics we use this evidence to define a customer execution framework with business logic designed to route each sales opportunity to the sales mechanism (and type of representative) producing the fastest response and most profitable results.

In our experience, when we have been involved in the complete implementation of value based segmentation to support B2B firms, value-based segmentation has been far superior to the traditional approach. It has been so because the alignment of resources has been based on the careful study of customer expectations and operational attributes such as capacity, response time, and skills, applied to sales and sales support areas. Likewise, we have applied with success similar principles combined with elements of predictive modeling in B2C companies to craft customer analytics platforms for e-commerce marketers **.

Benefits of customer segmentation for your business

There are many benefits out of this alternative approach to segmentation:

Proper customer segmentation that brings clarity about which customers make your business prosper and which strategies you can effectively execute.

A framework to determine the correct way to manage every customer, everywhere, and through every channel.

Uncovered revenue and profit potential within your existing customer base, including guidance on how to shape demand through cross- and up-selling.Improved lead conversion by correctly qualifying prospective customers.

Improved account planning practices.

Take Away

Customer segmentation is valuable to efficiently and effectively allocate marketing resources that maximize marketing and sales success. Understanding your options to customer segmentation is just as important to achieve a more successful execution. If you need help assessing and setting up effective customer segmentation for your organization please contact us.

Sources:

* Marketing needs to take a 'bottom up' approach. Mitchell, Alan // Marketing Week (01419285);10/2/2003, Vol. 26 Issue 40, p32

Related Information

Segmenting Customers - Game Changers

Sales Process Improvements

Tom Magas — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 09:11:00 GMT

Find a “hidden” source of incremental revenue -with sales process improvements.

When the dust clears and CEO’s and CFO’s have concluded their negotiations with their Boards of Directors, targets are set for the company’s financial objectives and “Sales Quota’s” are distributed, the question at the forefront of today’s Sales Leaders mind is “How can I possibly make that number?”

As a Sales Organization, you’ve done your bottoms up, your best case/worst case projections, looked at all the alternatives, and yet – you’re still 10% short – OF QUOTA – let alone the possibility to overachieve. Yes, “overachieve” – because this is where your top performers want to be. That’s where the real compensation is and that’s the difference between low and high morale. Nonetheless, you assign out quota to the individual teams, go through the mourning period where sanity is questioned and finally, put actions in place to “overachieve” the quotas.

Plan Strategically
As a Sales Operations Team, you’re funded to support the Sales Teams in achieving their goals, working cross functionally to align organizational efficiencies and provide visibility for CXO’s on performance and projections – BUT, are you strategic or just reacting? Have you mapped out and quantified where your investment dollars should go and what’s your expected return on those dollars?

To avoid getting caught up in a reactionary mode, it may make sense to try to not only be a support arm of the Sales Team, but be a catalyst for driving incremental revenue through your own set of quantifiable objectives.

Make Your Calculations
Using the calculator below, let’s set some ground rules. First, let’s assume that more time sales teams spend in front of customers and prospects results in an increase in revenue. Secondly, let’s also assume that a decrease in non-customer face time activities equates to an increase in time in front of the customer.

Sales Process Improvement Calculator

Process Improvement Example
Next, let’s take an example of a process improvement opportunity – let’s use a centralized document repository, which sales people spend their time on, and let’s expand upon it. A sales person may spend 2 hours/wk or 8.7 hrs/mo looking for documents, presentations or marketing materials that they need for a customer/prospect meeting. He or she may have to sift through several databases, go to many sources, do voice mail and email exchanges with a number of co-workers, assure what they are looking for is the most current revision, and so on. However, if a concentrated effort was made (including any investment) and a centralized document repository was established which resulted in a 20% decrease in a Rep’s time spent on this activity, then it would imply that the Rep has 1.8 hours more per month (or 21.6 more hours per annum) to spend in front of customers. Then using the current average $ per customer facing hour (or $100,000 / 78 hours = $1,282 $/hour), the annual gain in revenue would equal $27,691 (or $1,282/hour * 8.7 hours/month * 12 months * 0.2). Now, that’s just for one process improvement and for just one Rep!

Referring to the example again, you can use this same methodology on other process improvement opportunities and note the potential revenue gains. For example, using an Electronic Signature application, investing in automated research applications versus “find-it-yourself activities, adopting quote generators, implementing a CRM system that balances the company’s need for information with the Rep’s need to automate tasks, alerts, forecast preparation; and probably a whole host of other processes which impact the Rep’s customer face time.

Small Improvements Can Make A Big Difference
Although each opportunity may appear small in relation to the overall sales number, when you add them all up your total productivity gain can be the difference between 95% of goal and 105% of goal. Additionally, continuous process improvement should be the goal of all organizations.

Take Away
Once you set your own goals explore the small and large process improvement opportunities that can increase beneficial sales outcomes. Measure them before and after those improvements are executed and continually monitor progress through the sales cycle.

Sales Operations, as noted in numerous conversations with Sales Leaders, constitutes the catch all for everything sales. It can also be the catalyst of improved performance. It is way too easy to get caught in the reactionary trap instead of overachieving on a strategically sound and well-built plan. Even small sales process improvements, triggered by Sales Operations, may just be the difference between missing goals and exceeding your numbers.

For more insights on how to improve sales force management and sales force performance contact us.

Pricing Software Deployment Process

Alejandro Erasso — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 09:00:00 GMT

Analyzing the pricing software deployment process, are you ready?

In discussing the deployment of (enterprise) pricing software in your organization there are two preliminary issues you will need to resolve before beginning the process of actually sourcing a pricing software solution:

1. Is software the answer to your pricing woes?

2. And, if your answer is yes, is it now the right time?

Is software the answer?

Software should allow your organization to scale processes that incorporate information across the pricing cycle. If the process relies on personnel executing large, repetitive, complex, or even error-prone tasks, software is possibly your answer. If software improves an existing process by providing new information, computational capabilities, or better visualization, then it could also be a way to improve performance.

In all these cases we use the conjunction “if” since, unfortunately, selecting (enterprise) software and deploying it is complicated and not a certain thing. Software needs to be tightly integrated into your “ecosystem”, where process, people, information, policies, infrastructure, decision making, and incentives are all aligned. A software deployment necessarily touches all of them.

Software is not a cure all solution to your sales and profitability problems either. It may be possible that changes in other areas, such as a more specific policy on sales discount authorization or better training in negotiations for key decision making personnel, are more appropriate solutions to excessive discount at the deal desk, instead of a new bidding software solution. Naturally, only you can make the call about the actual needs and possible options.

Are you ready to deploy software now?

Besides having defined the need, secured the budget, and reached consensus to move forward with a new pricing software deployment, there remains a more crucial aspect to a successful pricing deployment: timing.

Timing is driven by the disposition of your organization to adopt:

new pricing processes
new practices
the discipline required to make the software investment pay off

In a nutshell, is your organization prepared to change? You can get the answer through these steps:

First, develop a comprehensive change management plan that focuses on how to achieve the end result you are aiming at. Begin with the end in mind (thanks Mr. Covey) and identify the practical changes that will need to be adopted in the new system plus the key user benefits of these changes.

Next, focus on achieving a balance between the operational business needs and the demands on the software functionality. Among others, avoid the following imbalances:

your organization demanding too much of the software, either in functionality or in scalability,– which may be difficult and impossible to deliver;
the software requiring significant changes to your processes and the organization,-which may cause massive disruption to the day-to-day activities, challenges in adoption, and, in the end, failure.

Then, identify the specific areas of the business and pricing processes that will be changing and the impact on your business or product line. Be sure you map it to the price waterfall for two reasons:

to track improved discount management resulting from the implementation of the new software;

to estimate the dollar benefits of the software investment in each transaction (i.e. their effect on sales).

Again, check how you are balancing your intent in making changes with the actual execution. Having a modular approach to pricing deployment, and getting perspectives from people in multiple functions (not just IT), will allow you to:

learn what each stage of the process is supposed to achieve;
understand timing;
identify dependencies;
minimize risks;
measure user acceptance;
adjust the change management plan, if necessary.

Finally, with your vision in mind, make sure that your software partners (developers, implementers, project managers, or business consultants) are a good organizational fit. Good people chemistry will aid in achieving acceptance and reaching your goals.

What to do next
If you are contemplating a pricing software deployment and want to be sure that deploying pricing software is the best solution or that the environment is right in your organization, you may want to contact some pricing experts that can:

evaluate your software needs;
help your organization adopt the process, practices, and discipline required to make the software investment pay off;
assure you maximize your software investment ROI;
ensure you obtain the right balance of intent to execution to assure success.

Please contact us.

Related Information

Five Tips to Deploy Pricing Software
Pricing Execution Beyond the Price Waterfall
Sales Operations Pricing And Quoting Solution (case study)

Sales Force On-Boarding Plan

Tom Magas — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 18:07:00 GMT

Using a proven sales force on-boarding implementation plan you can integrate new sales force hires to drive ramp-up time, loyalty, and teamwork.

You have likely thought about ramping up your sales organization to increase revenues, gain market share, and drive adoption by end user customers through alignment of high-touch sales and channel partners. But maybe you don’t have a formalized on-boarding program. An effective on boarding program for your sales force should include three key objectives.

On Boarding Three Key Implementation Objectives

1. accelerate ramp-time for new hires

2. address the remote worker

3. promote cross boundary relationships

Without a formal on-boarding program in place, it will be necessary to develop the procedures, processes, and content necessary for global adoption. Your plan should include four key phases with associated deliverables including:

Assessment

Design

Alignment

Implementation

Phase I - Hiring Plan Assessment
The first phase of your plan should start with a detailed assessment of your hiring plan. It is important to review the hiring plan – by location, by position type, and by expected start date. Secondarily, program content relevant for sales success must be analyzed and gaps in materials noted. Lastly, resource requirements require evaluation – classrooms, A/V equipment, Internet access, as well as organizational content presenters.

Phase II - Design
The second phase, design, consists of content development, schedules, organizational accountabilities, and metrics around desired outcomes. You will need to decide the length of your program. We typically recommend a program length that spans four days, with the program kicking off on a Monday and culminating on a Thursday (this minimizes time away from the field, based on travel days being relegated to the weekend on the front end and Friday on the back end).

Participants should be assigned “pre-work” to be completed prior to arrival. Presenters are assigned and your design team should work with each presenter on content and delivery options. All functions within the company should be represented – not only product groups, finance, marketing, and sales operations, but also legal, customer service, IT, and HR, to ensure a comprehensive, balanced, and action-oriented level of readiness. Furthermore, executives need to explain the vision, expectations, and their involvement in the sales efforts.

Phase III - Alignment
In the next phase, Alignment, you want to require all participating groups to review the entire program components to check for any redundancy or omissions. Surveys are produced to drive continual improvement and an Executive panel was established for final reviews.

Phase IV - Implementation
In the last stage, you will implement the newly developed program. You can use survey data from this inaugural “class” to rate the program, 4.6 out of a possible 5.0. Relevance, time-utilization, content, materials, tools, and executive interfaces are all items to score on the survey.

On the final day of your program, we recommend that you divide your participants into small groups and ask each group to present a solution to a fictitious sales opportunity – based on what they learned in the program. Theses presentations should be given to the Executive Panel (CEO/CFO/SVP Sales) and should be able to be completed in 15 minutes, with each member of the group active in the presentation. Feedback from the Executive panel is critical

Take Away
Developing a proven on-boarding implementation plan can be a game changer to make ramping up your sales organization successful in increasing revenue and gaining market share by their ability to align high-touch sales and channel partners. If you need help in structuring a game changing on-boarding plan contact u s.

Related Information

Sales Force On-Boarding Case Study

Training Your Sales Force

10 Sales Performance Risk Factors

Best Practices In Sales Human Capital Management

Sales Competencies and Workforce Analytics

Tom Magas — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 17:36:00 GMT

Sales competencies and workforce analytics aligning sales resources with business objectives.

Aligning the Sales Force to drive business objectives requires that Sales Leaders assess their organizations beyond quantitative measures, and that plans be constructed to leverage skills and competencies while identifying “gaps”.

Things often start with the Board of Directors giving guidance in terms of financial expectations and key performance indicators such as market share, regional contributions, growth targets, product or service mix, etc.

Once the CEO and CFO have digested that guidance, –maybe adding an uplift to top-line numbers–, and disseminated it, they ask each member of the Executive Team for plans on how to attain these objectives.

Finally, the Chief Sales Officer (CSO) should conclude his/her negotiations with the CEO and CFO regarding budgets and target. At this stage the course has been set.

Beyond distributing quotas, budgets (including headcount), and reviewing geographical or regional business plans, one of the key activities for the CSO is to first understand what his/her teams strengths and weaknesses are in terms of skills, competencies and attributes as well as what gaps exist in his/her organization. Whether it is movement into new geographic territories, a new customer type, a focus on account expansion, acquiring a new customer, or even a need to reach a higher level decision maker in a given account, the CSO should stop and analyze the teams capabilities, and determine how they align with the company’s goals and objectives, and his/her vision of execution.

Sales Leaders can address this analysis in different ways:

first, they can survey their first line managers and derive a consensus opinion -

This first relies heavily on assuming that the first line managers can assess (and have definition of) the multitude of competencies that predominate in high achievers and get an accurate picture of who they are in their teams.

second, they can go with their own intuition

This alternative requires an intimate knowledge of the organization from a skills perspective, setting aside the use of a strictly numbers based approach.

third, they can opt to be a bit more quantitative through the use of competency based modeling tools and workforce analytics.

This last alternative, using sales competency based modeling tools, allows Sales Leaders to not only define those competencies but also measure them. Through dashboards and use of workforce analytics the analysis becomes less presumptive and accordingly, more effective at filling those “skill gaps” to execute on the strategy.

Several examples can illustrate why using competency-based modeling tools and workforce analytics should be used in connecting the sales team’s skills to business objectives. They cover, among many, training expenditures, business process re-engineering, hiring, and compensation. Let’s look at each independently through “real world” cases:

Company A: One of Company A’s corporate objectives is to lower the amount of discounts given to customers, hence increase margins. Sales Leadership’s first inclination is to do training on negotiation skills and value based selling.
Is this an issue of skills or something else such as weak pricing execution, deficient product positioning, poor sales enablement, or lack of competitive intelligence?
If it is the latter, is this a good investment of training dollars?

Company B: One of Company B’s objectives is to increase sales cycle velocity. Sales Leadership invests in new tools and systems to streamline the quote-to-order process.
Is this a process and systems issue or is it caused by skill set deficiency?

Company C: A market leader selling to the SMB market has an objective of expanding into the SME space. In attempting to drive this objective, it builds its hiring plan around targeting individuals who have a competitive background AND have sold into the enterprise space.
Has Sales Leadership looked beyond these two qualifications and built a hiring profile which includes necessary skills such as account planning, CXO interfaces, detailed targeted account pre-call research, presentation skills, etc.

Company D: One of Company D’s objectives is to secure two new Fortune 500 logo accounts. Does the company have the necessary people with the wherewithal to capture them? Has Sales Leadership aligned their compensation plans to accommodate for internal resources to drive this objective? Is their total compensation enough to even attract external resources?

Take Away
These cases exemplify the advantage of integrating competency based modeling tools and using detailed workforce analytics in the planning process. Sales Leaders can avoid making irrelevant and therefore bad investments with these tools while achieving better levels of preparation and utilization of their sales resources.

We can help your organization in aligning sales resources with business objectives contact us.

Sales Human Capital Management

Tom Magas — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 13:41:00 GMT

How to achieve sustained sales success with sales human capital management.

We have all probably heard the term “Human Capital Management” and have read many of the books or articles published on the subject. Many top tier companies even publish it as a key strategic objective and talk at length about how critical it is to their long term sustainability.

Most public companies include footnotes in their 10Q’s or 10K’s which caution about the business risks associated with the loss or inability to attract and retain key personnel. The following quote came directly from one company’s 10Q: “if we lose key personnel or are unable to attract and retain personnel on a cost-effective basis, our business would be harmed”. The quote continues, “our success is also substantially dependent upon our ability to attract additional personnel for all areas of our company, particularly in our Sales, Research and Development, and Customer Service Departments”. Strong words but, let’s face it, they are true. Although the concept of Human Capital Management applies to all organizations within a company, this note will focus specifically on “Sales Human Capital Management”. In an informal survey of CEO’s, Sales leaders and Human Resources Executives done by Sales-Economics, “Sales Human Capital Management” is thought to be less of an integrated process but rather a series of programs sponsored by multiple organizations with multiple priorities.

So, what is “Sales Human Capital Management”? In its most basic definition, it is the approach used to acquire, prepare, use, motivate, and monitor investments in sales resources to drive the company’s go-to-market strategy. As mentioned earlier, it should be an integrated process, with all the necessary elements linked together and with each element or process having an impact on the others.

Who owns it? Ultimately, it’s the Sales Leader. However, in a matrix type of environment, it is often Sales Management, which has to rely on Human Resources for some responsibilities, and on Marketing, IT, and Sales Operations for others, all of them having competing interests.

More often than not their own organizational issues take precedence over their support of Sales. The Sales Leader has to be an “orchestrator” of the support organizations that impact sales execution, while at the same time, he or she must strategize with executive team members, manage direct reports, prepare review presentations, provide weekly forecasts, interface regularly with customers, visit partners, and make the numbers. When push comes to shove, the Sales Leader’s priority is making the numbers this quarter and thus the “orchestration” fails.

Why is an integrated process important?

Once you’ve developed your go-to-market strategy you should count on having your resources aligned with it. Otherwise the synergies of all the interactions among the activities to acquire, prepare, use, motivate, and monitor investments in sales resources won’t happen.

For instance:

Do you have confidence that your teams have the necessary skills to execute it?

Do you know your gaps in terms of alignment and skills?

Does your compensation scheme allow you to attract that top 10% externally as well as retain and motivate your top internal 60%?

Is the training that you do aligned with your GTM strategy and/or based on skill set deficiencies (including product knowledge; sales methodologies; soft skills, i.e., negotiations, presentation, teamwork; etc.)?

Does your performance management process drive hiring models, training programs, succession planning and is it linked to what individuals earn?

And the $1M dollar question – with two-thirds of your Sales budget tied to headcount – is your sales engine running at maximum efficiency?

It is clear that the synergies can easily turn into mutually reinforcing obstacles when an integrated process doesn’t happen.

Synergies are also reached through coordination. Small but mutually reinforcing actions contribute to significant performance and efficiency gains: One less miss-hire, a 10% reduction in new hire time-to-first-order, a decrease in “open-seat” time, a skills development event that drives more efficient sales execution, a redesigned/streamlined process increasing sales velocity, and so on – add up to several percentage gains in productivity!

Broken down simply, the greater the Sales Leaders ability to efficiently drive the Sales Human Capital Management process, the greater the potential that the Sales Leader has in achieving sustained success.

The model is basic: assure that your resource alignment is driving your GTM; when necessary, hire with great diligence; ensure that your on-boarding and subsequent training activities are relevant and timely, and that your compensation and rewards programs are driving the correct behavior; finally, consistently manage performance and have a succession plan in place to develop your future leaders.

Takeaway
The question isn’t whether these things are being done, -because they probably are. The question really is how well they are being done, and whether they are part of an integrated process or a series of independent programs sponsored by multiple organizations with multiple priorities. People may check the box and say “it’s been done” while investments still don’t bring the expected returns. If you need Sales Human Capital Management integration Contact Us.

Related Information

Upgrading Account Planning To A Core Sales Force Capability

Hiring & Retaining Key Talent

10 Sales Performance Risk Factors

Training and Coaching - What's the Difference?

Tom Magas — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 15:08:00 GMT

Knowing the difference between training and coaching is critical to building a successful team.

Whether it is an individual, a sales team or an entire sales organization, knowing the difference is an important element of a manager’s job. There is much confusion over the two, so let’s see if we can differentiate.

Training can be defined as an organized activity aimed at imparting information and/or instructions to improve the recipient's performance or to help him or her attain a required level of knowledge or skill.

Coaching, on the other hand, may be defined as an extension of traditional training methods to include focus on; (1) an individual's needs and accomplishments, (2) close observation, and (3) impartial and non-judgmental feedback on performance.

The differences are important on many levels to instilling organizational success.

Here are some initial questions to ask when thinking about sales training or coaching:

What is the objective of the training in the first place? Is it to improve or to enhance – reactive or proactive?

Who is our audience that requires the training? How do we know?

Have we included the leadership such that we create “stickiness” in that the imparted knowledge is sustainable?

Have we created tools for managers to effectively coach?

Have we conducted an assessment and benchmarked on where we stand now to measure the progress we desire from any new training? What’s the ROI?

Once you have answers to these questions you are ready to evaluate the strengths, weaknesses, and appropriateness of the type of training - or is it a matter of coaching.

Training

Training should have a specific purpose – whether it’s to denote defined procedures, enhance a particular skill, improve on an identified weakness or impart knowledge about products, services or offerings, or, in some cases -such as on-boarding, all of the above.

It can be a one-time event or a series of single ongoing events as part of a curriculum. It can be delivered as an instructor led event, as a web based/self-study activity, interactive conferencing (audio and video) or on a one-on-one session.

Whatever the motivation is when conducting a training event, four key factors may help elevate your chances of it being a success;

1. Pre-work; by requiring pre-work to be done prior to a training event, you assure that your target audience (is it an individual, team or organization) has a minimum baseline from which the instructor can start. The basic premise being that you don’t want to make it too basic for the advanced yet at the same time, not make it too advanced for the beginners.

2. Minimize one-way knowledge transfer; Hands on activities, breakout sessions, collaborative exchanges and visual aids allow for an enhanced and more productive session(s).

3. Test for retention; you’ve imparted information – now it’s time to verify what has “stuck”. Validate that your objective has been accomplished through a medium that best suits the training event – this can be written tests, individual or group presentations or through strictly instructor evaluations.

4. Measure you ROI – any training is expensive because of the costs associated with staging the event (preparer’s time, material costs, travel and expense, technology needs, etc.) as well as time away from their jobs. Always track results prior to the activity as well as results at necessary intervals after the activity. Any training should provide for a positive ROI.

Coaching

Coaching, on the other hand, should seek to extend principles learned from training activities. It can be highly personalized and accordingly is mostly done at the individual, rather than at the group level. The focus is on the individual’s needs based on formal or informal assessments, creating a “plan” or “objective”, using repetitive activities for sustainable performance to execute on that plan or objective , providing impartial and candid feedback on results, and finally, building confidence upon execution are all key attributes of successful coaches.

So, Training and Coaching – What’s the difference?

Training is an event or series of events which seek to impart a body of knowledge on individuals or groups of individuals. Coaching is working with individuals to execute on the objectives of that event or series of events through a set of activities unique to each member.

Take Away
Training and coaching are both necessary in all organizations. Knowing what your objectives are, who the audience should be, and benchmarking your goals with an assessment will ensure you select the right tool and thus improve your chances of obtaining better results, greater permanence, and more bottom line benefits for the company.

Related Information

Upgrading Account Planning to a Core Sales Force Capability

10 Sales Performance Risk Factors

Account Planning = Increased Sales

Alejandro Erasso — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 12:35:00 GMT

Good sales performance management requires good account planning. Do it right and account planning can increase sales significantly.

We all know that an effective account plan includes these essential components:

Understanding the Customer

Setting Goals

Strategizing and Planning

Validation

Validation of the plan’s content comes from the process of engaging sales peers, channel partners, and the client in the creation of the plan.

In addition, a worthy account planning effort has certain elements that lead to its successful creation and implementation:

Putting the client first: when addressing specific clients the question is not how can our company benefit most from this relationship, but rather, how our client can benefit most from its relationship with us (i.e. understanding the customer). This approach unveils otherwise unforeseen opportunities for supplying the client with solutions that traditional selling may not uncover. Additionally, this approach ensures that opportunities unearthed through the account planning process are real rather than simply a way to sell more products with no sustained benefit to the client (i.e. validation).
Planning that is beneficial to the account team: as the account development plan is prepared by those closest to the client, the information gathered from the client has to be truthful and useful. Therefore, obtaining solid intelligence requires that the folks who put together the sales account plan receive meaningful benefits from their efforts. More than an “Atta boy” is necessary i.e. tangible rewards for good planning lead to good execution.

Flexibility: while the temptation may be that what works for the first client should become the template for creation of an account development plan, there must be lots of room to customize plans for each customer. Otherwise, information that may have been important for one client’s plan could be quite useless in planning for another. For instance, approaching a family owned business with a well–thought out succession plan may be very different that the approach to a corporate division whose succession plan is decided by a remote board of directors who only act when needed. The family business is more concerned with holistic solutions while the corporate client may view profits as the most important part of a solution offered in a sales account plan (i.e. a plan is an individualized, customized work product).
Involving outside help: often fresh eyes see significant ways for new value creation. Using exclusively sales executives to develop account plans development can lead to fluff-filled goals and less reliable information (i.e. more validation).
Embracing the “simpler is better” principle: if the plan can be easily explained to others then it may guarantee that it will be clear in the account manager’s mind. If so then the chances of being executed are greatly increased.

Benefits of Good Account Planning

In general there aren’t many references that quantify the benefits of good account planning. However, here are two data points that demonstrate the impact of good account planning on sales growth.

At least 20% sales increase when account planning exceeds expectations vs. account planning not meeting expectations
(See CSO Insights - 2011 Sales Performance Optimization Report)
Growth at least 2.3X faster with good quality account planning
(The Corporate Executive Board Company Blog article “How Do You Quantify the Value of A Skill”)

In our experience, companies that make account planning a core competency exhibit the following:

A focus on quality, not quantity; actions, not ideals

An alignment of the seller’s needs to the customer’s needs

Input from the customer and channel partners

If you want to make your sales operations more profitable by making account planning a core capability of your organization, contact us.

Related Information:

Upgrade Account Planning to a Core Sales Force Capability

Case Study – Account Planning

Going Global Is Easier Said Than Done

Alejandro Erasso — Tue, 29 May 2012 05:38:00 GMT

In recent months the US government has been promoting export related efforts as a way of reactivating or accelerating economic growth. Many companies plan to take advantage of a weak dollar to improve the appeal of their products and services. Their expectations may be higher than their actual performance.

Besides the fact that many other nations are trying to do the same thing, namely devaluing or pegging their currency to the US dollar, leading to a gridlock in terms of monetary policy coordination among governments, in practical terms the new entrants, small and medium size companies attempting to capture market share overseas, face other more prosaic problems. For example, in terms of defining a competitive price in the new markets, they must decide how to operationally offer such pricing. Other questions include:

Do they play in an industry and/or line of business where prices are more or less set by global supply and demand (such as commodities in exchanges)? Or do they have more control over pricing?
Do they have advantages opening buy/sell operations in those new markets or should they rely on agents, distributors or some other type of channel partner?
Are the economics of exporting, including shipping and delivery, affecting the price position of their products?
Are they subject to gray market pressure?

The above yes/no questions are typical of to-be exporters to new markets. They will immediately lead to more open questions about the how much, with whom and when to do it. All this takes time, good planning and effective execution.

If instead the company already exports and has a foothold in some country or economic region, the questions are a little different:

What is the expected impact of the exchange rate between the company's pricing currency and the local currency of the target country?
How does the above affect competitiveness of the direct and indirect channels? In the same proportion and ways?
What are the threats and opportunities from the above in regards to local and foreign competition in the target market?

In all these cases the ability to operate quickly becomes the key factor for success. Legal, logistics, organizational and cultural barriers come to the fore first. And all this takes time and knowledge to address it. This is where well established channel partners play a key role to enable new sales.

The real question is if the US private sector is ready to actually penetrate new markets, with new companies and new offerings, as quickly as the government hopes for. Or will it be limited by the enormous effort to execute and thus rely mostly on existing exporters and a devalued currency?