Blog

A Sales Management Veteran Shares Insights on Tech-Savvy Team Motivation [VIDEO]

2014-03-12T12:00:00-07:00

When it comes to creating a high-performing, sales-driven culture, money is an important motivator, but it’s not the only one. Smart contests, competitions, recognition and rewards can make all the difference.

Steve de Marco, V.P. of Worldwide Sales for Xactly, joined App Talks, a new video series on AppExchange customer success stories, to share how he used Hoopla to build and motivate a high-performing sales team, and how Hoopla’s highly-visible, live sales coverage is becoming a pervasive motivation tool throughout the company.

Hoopla is a SaaS application that integrates with Salesforce, making it easy for sales managers to create contests and broadcast live, real-time performance updates on sports-style leaderboards. Check it out on the AppExchange.

The thinking is smart. The results are awesome. Check out a few of our favorite quotes and enjoy a ton of provocative thoughts from Steve in the App Talks videos.

Create a Culture of Competition

“Chris Cabrera and I were telesales reps back in the heyday 90s, at Silicon Graphics. We were totally motivated and inspired to win. So when we started to build a new telesales team in a remote office, we were looking for ways to bring that spirit of competition to life.”

Listen to how it all started.

Get Everyone Engaged

“We thought rest of the sales team wouldn’t be interested, but guess what, we found that other generations gravitate to live contests and leaderboards just as much…They want to see their faces on the screen and at the top of the leaderboard just like anyone else. On top of that, our leaderboards engage other parts of the company with sales results. Engineers, finance, HR and others see who’s winning and they get just as fired up.”

Check out how to use contests as an engagement tool.

Motivate Team Performance

“[Millennials are] a very smart generation, and very technologically savvy. They’re very competitive. If we put their goals in front of them, make them very visible, and allow them to see where they are against their goals – so they can constantly see that they’re progressing and achieving, and on their way to win…they will be the most hardworking, loyal employees you can imagine.”

Learn how to keep reps motivated.

Recognize Early and Often

“Recognition is everything. Reps obviously want to be paid the right amount, but once you accomplish that, then what else? It’s that recognition, seeing their face on that scoreboard, seeing that they’re the leader. The right type of salesperson wants to be top dog, at the top of the list, and that level of engagement is just fantastic. We ran a contest where the sales rep of the month got the really cool parking spot closest to the door. Completely non-monetary, didn’t cost us much as a company, but drove a ton of great behavior and competitive spirit.”

Find new ways to recognize reps.

Supercharge Productivity

“Tools like Salesforce coupled with Hoopla help to foster a high-energy environment. It’s all about the visibility. High technology, new technology that allows sales reps to really understand what their goals are and where they stand.”

“One of the best hiring tools we have is bringing candidates into our sales floor. If they’ve come from a low-tech, blasé environment and they walk into our sales organization – when they hear that buzz, feel that energy, see people’s names up on the screens – you can just tell…you got ‘em.”

Listen to Steve’s insights on creating a cool, energetic, engaging culture.

Lessons Learned

Don’t wait – get started with motivating your team now.
Keep it simple. Have contests based on daily sales activities to drive the behavior you want.
Let it take you where you want to go, because you’ll realize pretty quickly that there are so many great metrics and activities you can measure and use to motivate your team.
Create a strong, fun, energetic culture coupled with frequent, real-time recognition. Very few employees will want to walk away from that, even if they’re offered more money somewhere else.

If you want to create a great team culture with contests and competition, don’t miss this great advice.

Check out 200+ reviews and insights from other Hoopla customers on AppExchange.

How to Keep a Big Account Loyal

2014-03-12T10:00:00-07:00

A big company that buys a lot of product from you is not necessarily a good thing. Big companies have a habit of pigeonholing other firms into being suppliers of commodity products.

That way, they can play you off against your competition in order to push prices down. They don't care whether you make any money on the deal because they can just switch to another vendor should the price drop drive you out of the business.

Based on a conversation I had a while back with Sam Reese, CEO of the huge sales training firm Miller Heiman, there are five ways to defend yourself against this:

1. Differentiate yourself.

If your firm offers a needed product or service that no other company can provide, then it’s impossible for the big company to play you off against your competitors. To create that differentiation, you position your offering so that whatever is unique about it becomes a "must have" for that customer. I once lost a sale of a million-dollar publishing system because the competitor convinced the customer that they needed the ability to set type around the shape of a handprint, something that the customer had never done before and would never do in the future.

2. Provide expertise.

If you or your firm can offer expertise that the customer needs in order to fulfill their goals, you can be strategic to them, even if you’re a commodity supplier. For example, a company that sells glue for manufacturing consumer electronics might have world-class expertise in volume manufacturing that, if shared with their customer, would make them more profitable. That expertise is then periodically "lent" to the customer in order to reduce their manufacturing costs, thereby making an ongoing relationship valuable to the customer.

3. Create a high replacement cost.

If it would cost the customer a prohibitive amount to replace your firm's products and services, they're far less likely to replace you with another competitor. What's important here is that you create the high replacement cost AFTER you've made the sale, because prior to the sale, the big customer (if they're at all self-aware) are likely to see the replacement cost as liability and thus be less likely to buy from you in the first place.

4. Really know the account.

If you can get yourself involved in the inner workings of the customer account and become part of their strategic planning, they'll begin to see you as a consultant rather than a mere supplier. For example, IBM sometimes assigns an employee as a general IT consultant inside Fortune 100 firms. In addition to being a sales representative, that employee is mandated to act as a clearing house for any problems that occur with IBM's offerings.

5. Generate reverse credibility.

This one is tricky, because credibility usually flows from the larger company to the smaller one. (e.g. "Our customer list includes GM and Oracle!") However, if a smaller firm has a market reputation that helps the larger firm create credibility in a new market, the larger firm will may see the relationship as strategic. Example: the Taiwanese computer manufacturer Acer used to publicly tout its' relationship with boutique studio FrogDesign in order to seem more "cool" in the consumer PC space.

Get even more tips for sales success with the free e-book below!

What Peyton Manning Can Teach Sales Managers

2014-03-12T09:00:00-07:00

It was Monday, September 17, 2012, and Peyton Manning had just completed one of his worst games as an NFL quarterback. The four-time MVP had thrown three interceptions in the first quarter alone, on the way to a 27-21 loss to the Atlanta Falcons.

It was assumed that Manning’s poor play was attributable to a lingering neck injury that had sidelined him for the entire 2011 season. Such a poor performance was surely best explained by an injury that continued to impair his ability to throw the ball accurately. However, during the post-game news conference, Manning revealed that those three passes had gone exactly where he had intended to throw them. His ability to throw the ball was not the issue. So what was the culprit that had caused those three interceptions?

Manning said that his ability to throw the ball accurately had not been the problem. And it was not the result of confusion over the plays. Nor had the receivers run poor routes. The noisy crowd was not a problem, nor anything that the opposing defense had done. “It was decision-making,” he said. “It’s disappointing, but I just made three bad decisions.” The balls had gone where he’d wanted them to go, but he had chosen the wrong spots to throw them.

So what does this story have to do with sales managers? What lesson is to be learned from those three bad decisions?

In the sales force, we obsess over the skills of our sellers. We send them to sales training programs to develop their selling skills. Then we observe their sales calls to see if they’re demonstrating those skills. We coach them on what to do and what to say in front of their customers. And that’s all good. But is it sufficient?

Many salespeople fail to reach their potential not because of poor skills. In fact, an average salesperson can typically make a sales call that’s good enough to win the sale. Rather, many sellers fail because they’ve made bad decisions leading up to the sales call.

Continuing the football analogy, the sales calls that your salespeople make are like the throws Peyton Manning made that night. They are the result of many decisions that lead up to the demonstration of skill – whether throwing the ball or conducting a sales call. Just like Manning chose the plays to call and the receivers to target, your sellers decide which opportunities to pursue and which customers to target.

Are their sales calls executed well? Probably, because you’ve trained them and coached them on how to do it. But what about the decisions that lead up to those calls? Are those the best opportunities to pursue? Are they the right buyers to meet? Is it the right time to meet with them? Maybe. Maybe not.

A well-executed call at the end of a string of bad decisions will render a seller’s skill irrelevant. If it’s the wrong call on the wrong customer at the wrong time, who cares how well it’s conducted. It’s the wrong sales call executed flawlessly.

What sales managers should spend more time doing is coaching reps on how to make the right decisions – how to prioritize their time and target the right opportunities. We see very little sales coaching around these decisions, and it’s sorely needed. Sales skills are required, but they are not sufficient. Smart decisions must precede them.

So if your salespeople are failing, don’t assume that it’s a problem with their skills… Examine the decisions that they’re making. Don’t only look at HOW are they selling – look also at what, why, when, and where are they are doing it? They might be doing everything right, but for all the wrong reasons. And your competitors might be intercepting those deals that you’d rather have had instead.

This post originally appeared on vantagepointperformance.com.

Learn tips from sales experts from the free Salesforce e-book below.

3 Ways Improve Sales Forecasts

2014-03-12T08:00:00-07:00

Few areas of selling are more dicey than sales forecasting. So much so that, inside many companies, the process is so broken it looks like this:

Top management needs a story to tell investors, and thus asks the sales manager for a forecast.
The sales manager asks the sales reps what they think they’ll sell, based upon their current gut feeling.
The sales reps make a wild guess at what they might actually sell, then subtract 10 percent as a fudge.
The sales manager compares that forecast to the sales quota and adjusts both to match.
The marketing group issues its own forecast, based upon statistics from a “market research” firm.
The manufacturing group ignores all of the above and forecasts what it plans to manufacture.
Top management looks at the three forecasts, throws them out, then makes up numbers that will look good.
The accountants jigger the books so that, regardless of what was sold, the quarterly report resembles the CEO’s story.
If, for some reason (like the laws of mathematics) Step 8 isn’t good enough, the CEO fires the sales manager.

Sound familiar?

The key turning sales forecasts from the debacle above into a truly useful management tool is to remove as much of the politics as possible. Here's how:

1. Decouple forecasts from quotas.

There's nothing wrong with having sales quotas, but the time to talk about those quotas (and compensation) isn't when you're trying to come up with a meaningful projections. This takes some mental discipline on the part of the sales manager, who must resist the temptation to conflate the two activities.

2. Reward accuracy rather than penalize it.

While there's no question that the sales team should be able deliver the sales that are needed to make the company successful, the forecasting process needs to reflect reality, not wishful thinking. Shooting the messenger is dumb. What’s needed is “just the facts” attitude with rewards for getting the facts right.

3. Remove the amateurs from the process.

Part of the problem with the standard scenario is that everybody gets involved, bringing along their own, weird organizational baggage. Marketing, manufacturing, accounting and top management should react to the sales forecast, rather than drive it.

While the forecasting process may be broken within many companies, taking the appropriate steps listed above can help take the politics out of the process and make sales forecasting a truly useful management tool.

Learn even more about how to build a successful sales process with the free e-book below:

Flappy Bird for the Enterprise: The Marketplace Needs More Business Apps

2014-03-12T07:03:00-07:00

When it comes to games, entertainment, and social media, there’s always an app for that -- usually many more options that you actually need.

It makes sense that we're saturated with consumer applications because we’re all consumers in one way or another, but even considering this, the market for enterprise apps is woefully behind in comparison.

For example, the iTunes business is growing at approximately 34 percent year-over-year, with apps being a large part of that mix. And in the paid app space, almost 90% of apps are consumer-driven - leaving just 12% of paid apps targeting the enterprise.

So where’s the love for B2B apps? Despite the increasing usage of mobile devices in the workplace and the fact that enterprise apps earn up to 4x that of consumer apps, the B2B app market is still lagging behind.

If we’re all hot for the latest bird app, shouldn’t we be motivated about developing apps that make us more productive where we spend a third of our waking hours? If you're considering developing an app, then the underserved B2B environment is prime real estate for establishing yourself with a untouched niche.

Flappy ERP and Candy Quickbooks doesn’t sound as sexy as a consumer-facing app, but here's a few things to think about as your company considers creating a B2B app.

Why Aren't There More Enterprise Apps?

There are two core reasons why enterprise apps aren't more prevalent. First, enterprise anything is not as sexy as consumer anything. Second, the idea of an application is fairly new, so a critical mass adoption of apps has yet to occur.

The reasons companies haven't entered into the enterprise app game yet may include many of the common reasons indicative of an industry that doesn't understand the full value of that technology:

Lack of understanding about how to develop an app
Lack of resources
Concerns about ROI
IT efforts focused elsewhere
Legacy systems don’t integrate well with mobile
Difficulty in adapting quickly to new technology

A lot of these same early concerns were showered on now-common marketing strategies such as using Google Adwords, social media advertising, and SEO. Today, if you're a large company and you haven't considered Google ads, SEO, and Facebook, you would appear crazy.

And there are good reasons to get started sooner than later: 76 percent of businesses say they see improved responsiveness and decision making with mobile apps. More than half of B2B purchase decision makers use a tablet for research, and more and more employees are being permitted to bring their digital devices to work.

All this equates to a large space of opportunity.

Businesses are Already Developing Apps

Enterprise apps are here to stay, so there's a lot of opportunity and not a ton of risk dipping your toes into the water. Despite being under-represented, there has been a lot of movement in the B2B app market. According to this research, there will be four times the number of mobile application development projects targeting smartphones and tablets compared to native PC projects by 2015.

And 71 percent of companies are currently discussing custom app development. Another study says that almost 75 percent of companies involved in app development are focused on consumer apps. So 3/4 of those already developing apps are not creating apps for the enterprise.

This is one of those “who wants to be first” situations: you can either wait until everyone’s in the mobile app game and play catchup, or you can be a frontier-forger and start the party yourself.

There are existing examples of successful enterprise applications. There are plenty of big names out there, and you probably have downloaded a few onto your tablet. Dropbox, Skype, Evernote, LastPass, and Docusign are all companies that started out on the web, but took their services and adapted it to a mobile application with emphasis on business.

Many of the big players already have their own app eco-system and development platforms. You're well aware of Apple's iTunes and Google Play, but did you know that other well-known companies such as Amazon and Salesforce (ahem) also have app platforms?

The Internet of Things: The Future of All Apps

The way we are familiar with apps now will be different with how we interact with apps in the future. Just another reason to jump in now.

One exciting frontier we’re just now embarking on, especially as it relates to B2B opportunities, is what many call The Internet of Things. “Things” in the sense that there’s no one industry that it focuses on, IoT is the idea that everything will connect with everything... and you guessed it, usually through an app.

We’re already seeing it creep into the consumer space, with products like FitBit and Nest connecting our actions and behaviors to online data. With the Internet of Things, you'll need an app that will connect your product or service to other products and services.

Imagine what your brand could do with the data management that the Internet of Things devices provide, and how you could increase adoption of your product as users become connected to the Internet at work, while commuting, at the gym, at home, or on vacation.

Industries like retail, transportation, healthcare, manufacturing, and clean tech offer some of the biggest opportunities for growth with the Internet of Things. Want proof that B2B is succeeding with it? There are already brands using it for:

Oil pipeline monitoring
Closed circuit television
Smart utility metering
Fleet management
Predictive maintenance

We’ve only just begun to dig into how B2B applications can be used to connect to users in more meaningful ways, as well as provide valuable data for analysis.

How Can You Leverage Enterprise Apps?

Start by using them. There are productivity, finance, marketing, and sales apps that can help your staff do more. Right now? Approximately 80% of employees are using unapproved apps at work -- clearly there's a need to fill in that gap.

Consider how building your own app may change the ways your customers, prospects, and employees experience your product/service If done in the right way, an app will also provide additional revenue streams.

After all, if you already sell software, you’re a step away from an app. If you don't sell software, think about how an app can expand the way you currently do business.

The thing is, customers are already expecting you to have an app. If your customers wondering where your app is, you don’t want to just meet their expectation, but you want to be ahead of their needs.

Enterprise apps are used for a variety of functions, but some of the more common uses are:

Project management
Email and lead nurturing
Customer retention
Event management
Sales tools
Human resources
Customer service

If any of these make sense for you, it just might be time to get into the enterprise applications game.

Think of how a simple game like Flappy Bird succeeded in a over-saturated consumer app marketplace, and you'll have context for the huge opportunities in front of you for developing your own enterprise app.

Did you like this post? Share it with just one-click on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, or Google+.

Convinced you should be building enterprise apps? Download our free Anatomy of a Mobile App e-book below.

How to Hire Sales Stars from the Movie Moneyball

2014-03-12T06:43:13-07:00

Google believes this data will predict employee performance, according to an article published in The New York Times.

Calling GPAs worthless for hiring may sound harsh. But we’ve all known this for years, but now that Laszlo Bock, Senior Vice President of People Operations at Google believes it, the world of HR is changing.

Do your hiring tactics still work?

For years, hiring managers have used ridiculous criteria and believed they can intuitively determine the character of salespeople and predict top performers. From the moment they walk through the door for an interview, managers trust their impressions and gut feelings to make hiring decisions.

I love the movie Moneyball. It’s a must-see for every businessperson. In one scene from the movie, the general manager and his talent scouts discuss which minor-leaguer to call up. One scout says, “I like Perez.” Another scout retorts, “Perez has an ugly girlfriend. An ugly girlfriend means no confidence.”

We laugh at such silly examples, but how often, when discussing applicants to employ, have company managers and their hiring teams based their views on gut feelings, intuitions or crazy criteria?

Here is the cold, hard truth about hiring salespeople: Data trumps intuition. Facts trump feelings. Reliable predictive statistics trump the attractiveness of a candidate’s girlfriend. I can’t believe I even have to say that.

It’s difficult to objectify the hiring process and to discover what reliably predicts performance for top salespeople, but it can be done.

Consider for a moment the best salesperson you’ve ever known. What made him or her exceptional? Was it the degree from an Ivy League school? The 10 years of experience? Employment at a Fortune 500 company?

I have posed this very question to hundreds of sales managers and leaders. If you responded like most, then you probably didn’t identify one of the criteria listed above.

In fact, you probably picked one or more of these:

Endlessly resilient
Hunger to earn
Understands people
Desire to be the best

It’s intuitive and it’s what Google has now proved with data. Everybody knows this list is what makes the best salespeople, yet the entire system on which our hiring decisions are made is based on old-school thinking that no longer makes sense.

However, these characteristics are difficult to measure and packaged in order to be effectively utilized in the hiring process. That’s where Moneyball Hiring comes in.

Join us as we explore “Moneyball Hiring” and how to use sabermetrics to make better hiring decisions at the Sales Acceleration Summit on Thursday, March 13. This online summit features more than 80 top sales experts, and registration is free.

Sign up for the Sales Acceleration Summit now at the button below.

About the author

Gabe Larsen has consulted global clients on generating revenue for 10 years. He is currently coaching manager at InsideSales.com.

Learn more sales hiring tips with the free Salesforce e-book below and stay tuned for recaps of the sales summit on this blog.

15 Awesome Photos from Salesforce.com’s 15th Birthday

2014-03-11T10:14:27-07:00

Time flies when you’re having fun!

It’s been 15 years since salesforce.com was founded in 1999, and we definitely weren’t going to let this milestone go by without a celebration. Employees in 30+ cities from San Francisco to Sydney, Toronto to Tokyo came together last week for an epic day of giving back and having fun, Salesforce-style. Check out some of our favorite photos from our worldwide volunteering extravaganza, then grab some cake and champagne...and cheers to the next 15 years!

View of Justin Herman Plaza in San Francisco. Photo by Sarah Caporusso

Employees in Australia and New Zealand racked up 700+ volunteer hours in one day. Photo by Davinder Mann.

Leis on display in Tokyo. Photo by Satoko Ehara.

Celebrating under the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

Employees in Herndon, VA took to the ice to support the Cool Cats Special Hockey Team. Photo by Dwayne Wilson.

Janelle Monae hit the stage in San Francisco. Photo by May Wong.

Employees in New York bagged 19,000+ lbs of sweet potatoes at City Harvest. Photo by Barb Smeltzer.

Volunteers were hands-on at the Munich Food Bank. Photo by Stefan Karnoll.

SaaSy jumps for joy in San Francisco. Photo by @salesforcejobs.

Lunch, balloons, and smiles in Singapore. Photo by Alvin Liew.

Decadent desserts in Dublin.

Atlanta employees sorted books for Africa. Photo by Sarah DeMar.

Employees in San Francisco donated 20,000+ lbs of food to the San Francisco Food Bank.

Inspecting food for safety at the Food Bank in Austin. Photo by Susie Turk.

Painting classrooms and working with children in India. Photo by Annu Mehta.

Swimming in Salesforce pride in Sydney. Photo by @salesforceANZ.

See more birthday photos here.

Ready to find your #dreamjob at salesforce.com? Visit salesforce.com/careers or click the button below.

The ABCs of Small Business Growth Strategy

2014-03-11T10:00:00-07:00

All businesses are focused on creating opportunities for driving revenue and creating profitability. That focus involves strategic as well as tactical goals. Otherwise, driving revenue and creating profitability won’t necessarily translate into business growth and sustainability. It might translate into indigestion.

You want to be in business next year, and the year after that, and onward...aren’t you?

The question to ask yourself is: Are your eyes bigger than your stomach?

Are your business goals a matter of winning the Coney Island Hot Dog Eating Contest? (That's a tactical objective that strikes me as painful.) Alternatively, do your goals involve the process and discipline involved in training for a marathon race, ensuring you maintain adequate caloric and fluid intake along the way, and finishing the race strong?

Here are 3 strategies to keep in mind when focusing on moving your business into growth mode.

A. Develop and retain a loyal list of A-Customers

You do your best work for these customers. You are on the same page. You communicate and collaborate. While your current customer base may involve only a few of these types of customers, your growth strategy focuses on creating the conditions where A-listers comprise at least 50% of your customer base.

B. Develop and Retain a loyal list of B-Customers

Unlike A-listers, these B-Customers may be small to mid-sized businesses themselves. As a result, they may not offer the opportunities for diversification into new markets or industry verticals that A-listers do. However, like A-list customers, B-listers represent repeat business and the type of business which brings out your best efforts. Your output typically is error-free while not as complex as that required by A-listers. These B-listers represent a solid means of stabilizing cash flow throughout your fiscal year. What percentage of your current customer base is comprised of B-Customers? What would happen to the stability of monthly cash flow if your customer base was comprised of at least 50% B-list customers?

C. Focus on eliminating C-Customers

These folks offer smaller, commodity opportunities. They also take up a lot of your time with their demands and ambiguity. Yes, some of them may be your original customers, and you have a sentimental attachment to them. Yet over the years, these C-Customers haven’t increased the amount of business they do with you. They are fickle and price-sensitive. C-Customers are the types of customers you are tempted to do business with when cash flow is drying up. You always regret your decision. Once you choose to do business with them, you inevitably miss out on more lucrative opportunities with those desirable A- and B-list folks. You know who your C-Customers are already, don’t you?

Focusing on continuously analyzing your customer base is an integral part of business growth. If you are a small business looking to move to the next stage, develop a systematic and disciplined process for evaluating whom you are doing business with. Each month, segment your customer base based on the long-term potential they present your company for growth.

Make sure your eyes are only as big as your stomach and you’ll be in excellent shape.

Align your growth objectives with acquiring and retaining A-List and B-List customers. You both will be more satisfied by the experience of doing business with each other. You will be hungry to continue your collaboration, as well. A loyal, retained and satisfied customer base means growth in anyone’s book.

Babette N. Ten Haken, Founder & President of Sales Aerobics for Engineers, LLC, catalyzes revenue-producing business transition, startup growth and professional development. Download her newest White Paper at her Free Resources Page. Sales Aerobics for Engineers®, LLC, 2014. All rights reserved.© Contact her at babette@salesaerobicsforengineers.com.

Learn more small business growth strategies with the free Salesforce e-book below.

Top 4 Reasons Salespeople Struggle to Reach Decision Makers

2014-03-11T09:00:00-07:00

Three separate, but related, incidents occurred this week, all having to do with reaching decision makers.

First, I received a cold call that went like this:

"Hi Mr. Kurlan, this is [name withheld] from [huge company name withheld]. We're a company that.....oh no - the script disappeared from my computer. I...I...can't talk to you without following the script. Bye."

First off, the Mr. Kurlan thing is like fingernails on a chalkboard - I can't stand it and never will.

Second, the Mr. Kurlan thing again. Before he says another word it tells me that he doesn't know me. If he did he would call me Dave.

Third, the Mr. Kurlan thing yet again. It tells me that he doesn't think he is at the same level as me, shouldn't really be talking with me and can't speak my language.

I don't even have to provide commentary about what happened with his computer and script. I do know that there isn't a CEO anywhere that would have listened for even 5 seconds if he had started reading from a script!

Incident Number two:

I was asked about a salesperson at a client's company. The Sales Candidate Assessment predicted that he would have difficulty calling on Senior Executives and, of course, he was struggling. When asked what they could tell him, I said this:

Intellectually, he needs to know how crucial this is for his success.
Conceptually, he needs to know that he can reach senior decision makers.
Belief-wise, he needs to know he belongs with senior decision makers.
Practically speaking, he needs to learn the strategies and tactics for how to consistently reach senior decision makers.

Incident number three:

I received the results of a survey conducted by the cloud-based, business presentation company, Brainshark, Inc.

The survey reported that salespeople were frustrated by the following presentation challenges as it related to decision makers:

Key decision-makers absent from the room (50%),
Unresponsive/difficult-to-reach prospects (55%)
Not knowing who else is influencing purchasing decisions (49%)

So here we are again, with half of the salespeople reporting that they aren't reaching decision makers. And why would a decision maker want to be reached if the salespeople are focused only on presentations? Executives wonder why their sales cycles are so long, their closing percentages are so low and their margins are slip sliding away...that will continue to be the rule and not the exception, until salespeople bring meaningful conversations and value directly to decision makers.

When it comes to salespeople believing, reaching, acting appropriately and speaking the language of senior decision makers, it is very ugly out there. Objective Management Group’s statistics show that a whopping 68% of salespeople struggle to reach decision makers.

How do you measure up?

About the author

Dave Kurlan is a top-rated speaker, the best-selling author of Baseline Selling, and a leading expert on Sales Force Development. He is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the leading developer of sales assessment tools. He is also the CEO of Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a leading sales force development firm. He possesses more than 30 years of experience in all facets of sales development including sales and sales management training, consulting, infrastructure, leadership, recruiting and coaching.

For even more helpful sales insights, grab your copy of the free e-book below:

The 3 Technology Roadblocks Standing Between Us and True Mobility

2014-03-11T08:31:14-07:00

I have a vision. A vision that one day sales teams of every size can seamlessly share their presentations with each other and every client they meet without restrictions.

In my work with some of the largest and most powerful sales teams across the country, I’ve found that one of the biggest fears plaguing mobile sales teams is a fear that their devices and presentation applications will fail when they enter a new conference room to pitch a potential client. What if I didn’t download the most recent version of the deck? What if my connection cable isn’t compatible with their projector? What if I can’t access my VPN because of the network firewalls? What if I have an Apple table but they have a Samsung smart TV?

While there are more mobile devices and apps available now than ever before, this influx of brand and application choices causes heightened fragmentation of the mobile market, pushing us further and further away from achieving seamless mobile connections.

In October 2013, Gartner released their annual Top Ten Strategic Technology Trends for the upcoming year, which included four key obstacles that face our technology landscape and inhibit true mobility.

Trend 1: Mobile device diversity management

“Through 2018, the growing variety of devices, computing styles, user contexts and interaction paradigms will make 'everything everywhere' strategies unachievable.”

The powerhouse technology companies like Apple and Google are creating more and more consumer-facing gadgets and devices, making my vision of a holistic ecosystem of seamless content connections seem like a pipe dream. In the enterprise, we should not be focus on spending budgets on the latest and greatest hardware, especially when employees are expecting BYOD privileges, but rather focus on investing in the software and applications running on these devices.

There will always be a new iPhone, Android, Windows or X brand device that pops up onto the market – that’s not something that your company can control. But what you can control is making sure the sales software and platform your team is using exceeds their expectations and enhances the sales cycle.

Trend 2: Cloud/Client Architecture

“The increasingly complex demands of mobile users will drive apps to demand increasing amounts of server-side computing and storage capacity.”

It’s predicted that by 2017, 90% of enterprise apps will be both desktop and mobile (Gartner Predicts, 2012). Because of this exponential increase in apps demanding both server-side computing and storage capacity, companies need to integrate lightweight applications into their existing storage applications and CRMs to add increased mobility and functionality.

Maintaining one central CRM will reduce employee confusion, version control and security risks, while streamlining your sales team’s process.

Trend 3: Software Defined Anything (SDx)

“While openness will always be a claimed vendor objective, different interpretations of SDx definitions may be anything but open. Vendors of SDN (network), SDDC (data center), SDS (storage), and SDI (infrastructure) technologies are all trying to maintain leadership in their respective domains, while deploying SDx initiatives to aid market adjacency plays.”

First of all, this needs to change. Openness is the key to building successful products and applications designed for an enterprise’s specific needs and needs to be embraced by all vendors. Until we break down the walls between the major technology giants like Google and Apple, our CIOs and IT teams will always be mandating BYOD restrictions and security walls, sales teams will be forced to use devices and hardware that they are not familiar with, and true mobility and seamless connections across every point of our lives cannot be achieved.

While our devices and smart technology connect us to the Internet and a plethora of information like never before, I believe we need to establish a seamless way of connecting the content and data within those devices to fully achieve true mobility.

About the author

Jamie develops strategic business partnerships in the U.S. and oversees integration of Shodogg’s ScreenDirect platform with clients. Prior to Shodogg, Jamie was a media sales executive with Warner Bros. as well as Turner Broadcasting managing a team of planners and reps that generated over $500 million in sales for TBS, TNT and TruTV networks. www.shodogg.com

Learn more about your CRM options with the free Salesforce e-book below.