For Senior Management, it is often difficult to quantify the impact of poor alignment on corporate performance. But let’s face the facts: what does a stop to the battle between Sales & Marketing have on offer?

• Sales cycles get shorter
• Market entry cost goes down
• Lower Cost of Sales

Apart from considerable cost decrease opportunities, working together as a team directly impacts revenue. Think of aligned brand and product messages enhancing the company’s reputation in the market. Or increased profits when Sales follow up Marketing campaigns more effectively.

Everybody will agree that Sales & Marketing are supposed to work towards a common goal: maximising the company’s potential. Now what to do to close the gap between the 2 departments? Here are a few tips to get started:

• Introducing a common language is an absolute must

A common language enables development of goals and messaging that will be shared over departments and which every individual agrees upon. Also, it will become much easier to introduce aligned quantification and qualification criteria, e.g. for leads and campaign goals/results. Sales & Marketing will be able to correct and enhance each other’s work, and work together to achieve shared business goals.

• Aligning Sales & Marketing with customers’ readiness to buy

Most often, Sales & Marketing are driven by internal processes rather than the customer’s buying cycle. They will be giving company and product presentations, demo’s, sending proposals, etc … too often without any result. Sales & Marketing should learn together to understand the mental phases your customers are going through to come to a buying decision. These common insights will support Marketing to deliver sales-ready materials and Sales to better perform in the field.

• Introducing an experience sharing platform

Sales will learn from each other and Marketing will get a better grasp of what is really going on in the field. The platform consists of a small set of sales-ready deliverables which are kept up to date per segment and key-contacts in the buying process. Regular sales meetings with best practice sharing and assisted by marketing are the starting point. Ask your sales to send a blackberry style email with the summary of meetings (especially on pains, challenges and capabilities) and make sure marketing has access to that information in order to keep the best practice up to date.

Curious to learn about your experience with Sales & Marketing battles!

I see 3 reasons which I will support by real life examples:

1. Many lack the necessary business insight to serve as a sounding board for line management. Therefore they behave as “prescribers” to questions from line management. Yey these questions are usually too symptomatic due to the daily ins and outs involvement of managers. A good example is a sales manager asking for closing skills training because of a too low hit-rate and/or decision dates continuously shifting over time. Result a closing skills training is being organized. Yet a lack of closing skills is in less then 5% the real cause of the mentioned problems. The solution should have been HR offering to analyze the root cause and to propose solutions with a lasting impact. This of course is only viable if HR is taken seriously thanks to their business insights.
2. Secondly, I see HR departments with new, good in itself, theories and plans that are too heavy and difficult to be implemented on top of the daily work that unfortunately does not stop because of a change process. This in turn leads to frustration in HR departments because they get too little involvement of line management to implement the necessary changes. These projects are usually not enough adapted and pragmatic to the real world which leads to quite large resistance. This in turn leads to a too low adoption rate and results quickly fading out. A good example is some of the competence and growth/evaluation practices and programs put in place. Heavy bureaucratic processes with formalized timing and reporting from managers to HR. Automated in user unfriendly intranets. Seldom based on simple deliverables and a common language which improves day to day communication between manager and employee. Let alone creating an environment stimulating people to give the best of themselves in order to create a chain of actions leading to optimized business results.
3. HR does too little effort to understand and create insights on management level in cross departmental issues and linkages. Their distance to the daily ins and outs puts them in the ideal position for those insights and to share these with their colleagues. Of course, they simultaneously need to propose pragmatic solutions. A good example is a solution consisting of building sales ready deliverables combined with sales training, coaching and upgrading sales meetings to becoming an experience sharing platform. This solution require budgets from 3 departments in a lot of large organizations.  Training from the HR budget, deliverables from marketing and coaching/consulting from the sales budget. I’ve seen very few HR people who took internal actions to launch such a project, let alone understanding the business need and internally sell such an integrated approach.

The above shows in a painfully obvious way that a lack of operational knowledge and insights on the one hand, and implementation focus on the other hand forms the basis of the problem.

Some possible actions which can resolve the problem:

Start by breaking down the HR walls. Translate theory into pragmatic solutions feasible even if it sounds like a bad idea from the theoretical point of view. This means that the broad and deep use of the skills and tools must get the upper hand on the theoretical appropriateness of the solution.

Focus on gaining more business insights through more time to spend in the workplace. Divide your time outside the company premises by not only networking and studying in HR circles but also spending a lot of time in broad management environments such as the vMA (management association in Flanders) to name only one. It will allow you improve your operational knowledge as well as being able to toss of your ideas and experience with line managers from other companies.

Only then will HR:

• sufficiently understand what really lives on the floor;
• get broad support from the staff and get surprised by the acceptance of their projects;
• asked to be part of the executive management team;
• and create lasting impact thanks to their efforts.

First something about scalability. Scalable organizations are:

• End-to-end aligned: Streamline your value chain by having coherent bundled responsibilities. Written processes are kept to a minimum to keep the organisation adaptable and agile. This will help to make individual contributions to the goal clear to everyone. The increased involvement and insights will enable people to be creative and to contribute to the result in the most effective way. Doing the right things instead of doing things right. The best bundled responsibilities are those allowing you to quickly find new people on the job market because you take available combined competencies into consideration.
• Dynamic organizations: Endorsing a culture of facing the brutal facts, where people and not the processes are central. Ensuring that people focus on their contribution and not on their career (plan). Learning from and celebrating successes but also learning from mistakes being made. Being convinced that uncertainty is the only certainty in life.
• Thought leaders in their field: They strive to be different not better. They educate the market based on their differentiation so that prospects seek their leadership. Lead nurturing based on valuable content for the prospect is their way of promotion. Improving the value proposition for each of their served segments is what drives product development.
• Customer focused: The customer and the market are central in everything they say and do. The front-line organisation is based on buying readiness of individual involved people in the decision making process rather then an automated nexst step sales approach.
• above all Vision and DNA based: All of above is impossible to execute in case of DNA dilution. Don’t keep people on your staff whom are not DNA compliant not even if you consider their contribution or importance indispensable for the organization. This is where the blindness to future problems commence. Managment will end up managing people instead of their business.

The biggest advantage of  ‘design for scalability” is that it works both in periods of growth and during recessions. Scalable organizations can more quickly adapt to their environment in both good and bad days. Every crisis forcing you to reduce headcount or reorganize the company is a unique moment of choice to increase your scalability. This means also having the courage to leave trodden paths.  This implies not to:

• reduce your headcount by letting go of people with the cheapest severance package;
• cancel the simplest costs and investments such as training and educating people, change processes necessary for the long term, sales and marketing spending etc…
• put your best people on the biggest problem rather than on the largest opportunity;
• deviate from the long-term strategy thereby losing focus. Losing clarity throughout the entire organisation will be a consequence. Thus increasing the uncertainty resulting in paralysis;
• acquire companies when the market is on its top and everyone is bidding as if the sky is the limit.

but on the contrary:

• Cut inefficiencies grown over time;
• Continuously adapt to the changing circumstances without undermining the long term vision. Being vision focused;
• Transparent and timely communication;
• Putting DNA, people and competencies central in your organisation to avoid bureaucracy and maximize involvement.

Leaders and managers will no longer have an excuse to take resolute decisions improving the scalability of their organization once the economy is picking up.

This is the only way to maximize your potential!

The first thing that has to be said is that few companies have changed their sales approach in an appreciable way over the last few decades. Yet buyers are seeking to buy and not to be sold to for over a decade.

I still see sales trainings and managers telling their sales and to look at the sales cycle and behave in an way that is inward looking. Sales force automation (SFA) and customer relation management systems (CRM) haven’t really helped to convert the front-line in an outward looking mode and helping people to buy from them instead of being sold to.

I was pleasantly surprised to see one of the outcomes of the 2009 sales conference in Miami where the buying cycle emerged as the new standard for funnel management. I trust this to be a stimulus for all  the Perpetos customers bringing this into practice since 2005. But their is still a long way to go. It is indeed the best way to get subjectivity out of your funnel, yet it demands a mind-shift of the whole sales organisation and another way for management to coach and interact with their sales team. They all must learn to ask way more questions and ‘really’ try to understand what the customer is saying.

The principle is simple: Ask the customer questions which allows you to know the readiness to buy of each individual in the decision making unit (DMU), align them all so that they move through the buying cycle in a synchronised way and adapt your actions to it.

A couple of tips to improve your funnel management:

• Stop tracking and discussing sales steps and process. Start using readiness to buy phases based on reactions and answers to questions from each individual involved in the buying process. Ideally start using the Buying Clock. Using the time on the clock is an easy way for implementing a, consistent used, common language.
• Are we asking for and tracking the next step or are we engaging the sales rep to first decide on the next objective to facilitate the buying process on a project level before deciding what the next step should be, when and with whom? Do we track this in our funnel?
• Track the pain level of the customer by also knowing the impact of the challenges on the customer. Is their a compelling reason or an urgent need?
• Has your sales rep access to the decision maker? Is he continuously involved in the process and kept up to date by the sales rep?
• Is the go-live date the most important date we discuss with the customer? Is it a fixed date and why or can it easily be postponed?  Do we know and  are we tracking the go-live date?
• Has the customer actually confirmed your solution fit and did we postpone drafting the proposal until that moment?
• Split the weight % in 2 distinct ones: project%=what is the probability of the customer actually buying and win% = the probability of you winning the deal.
• Are you tracking the most important mandatory buying criteria and what is the perceived scoring of the customer compared to the competition? Do you discuss ways to influence these buying criteria?

Finally:

• Convert your weighted funnel in a scenario based funnel on which you coach the sales rep.
• Engage in vivid 1:1 discusions with sales to set a continuous improvement process in motion.

Your benefit and result: An accurate forecast with a highly improved visibility.

The most often used funnels nowadays are still based on subjective input from sales. It’s amazing to see how many managers are using such a funnel to predict revenue and use it as the basis for budget exercises.  This is the funnel that most people use yet it is a very outdated model. This type of funnel is an artificial invention taking the eye away from the prospect and puts the focus on sales actions.

The fact that doing something is putting the opportunity on a given point in the funnel is a totally wrong assumption. The thinking is flood. You can give company and product presentations, demo’s, send proposals even when asked, etc without achieving anything. The question is am I doing something which corresponds with the readiness to buy?

Here are the biggest funnel mistakes:

• input based on subjective sales rep input. The gut feeling of sales people in terms of funnel management are seldom correct because:
  • they are to closely involved to have an overall view
  • most sales are to much influenced by the opinion of their ’sponsor’ and/or last sales action
  • they have too little visibility on what’s happening at decision level
  • not enough, if at all, contact with the ‘real’ decision makers
• individual forecast building by using a percentage win-rate on each of the opportunities. Most funnels at sales rep level and even on corporate level have to little opportunities at the same stage with too much variation in size
• defined by selling activities: performing activities is not necessarily moving the opportunity closer to a decision
• lack of common definitions
• imposed as a reporting tool and not as a day to day self-coaching tool: The funnel will never be up to date or based on careful thinking if it is not in a format, and incorporated in the way of working, which influences the agenda and behavior of the sales rep
• tracking and reviews based on must win deals resulting in starved pipelines and pushing salespeople to do the right things at the wrong time.

Helping management and the VP sales to more accurately predict the revenue is to convert the funnel into a buying funnel which tracks the readiness to buy of the opportunity. This is even more true in more complex sales with quit an amount of people involved in the decision taking. Because each of the involved people have their own agenda and readiness to buy which must be synchronized in order to move the opportunity closer to a decision in the quickest way possible.

The mental stages a buyer is going through: These phases are universal and cultural independent.

• execution of existing solution and not interested in any information or offering in that area
• executuion and interested: something triggered the person to want to know more about something
• Field of Tension: Starts with an admitted pain which evolves over time into an urgent need. This results in the decision to buy something
• Market Research: The prospect goes out to the market to search for potential solutions and vendors
• Hesitation: This phase starts when the prospect thinks to be convinced to buy what from whom. At his point the focus shifts from looking to the benefits and advantages of acquiring the solution to all what can go wrong after having bought.
• Implementation: This is the period during which the solution is being implemented.
• Execution: The solution is in full use until the cycle starts all over again.

Perpetos has converted these phases into a 24 hour buying clock™.

Some of the reported results you acquire by this system are:

• a true shift towards customer focused thinking and acting
• an objective pipeline with a much better accuracy
• improved internal communication based on the hours of the clock
• lower cost of sales (i.e. less multiple people meetings because sales and pre-sales exactly determine when their presence is needed)
• improved hit rate
• more balanced pipeline

Let my know your experiences!

Trying to create certainty by extrapolating a known past into a bright future has definitely proofed to create an illusion of predictability. Spreadsheet management as a way to do business planning has been a common practice for too long in too many companies.  Optimal functioning and productivity of people has long been linked to the wrong assumption that people need certainty. The difficulty to break the ’status quo’ within companies, and definitely the political world, has supported this way of thinking. People prefer the known discomfort over the unknown future.

Seneca once wrote: “The greatest loss of time is delay and expectation, which depend upon the future. We let go the present, which we have in our power, and look forward to that which depends upon chance, and so relinquish a certainty for an uncertainty.” Yet uncertainty is the only certainty.

It is my conviction and experience that people are not afraid of change but are afraid of the unknown personal impact of the change. Too many leaders and managers are trying to sell certainty to overcome this. Yet many studies have proven over and over again that people need a certain level of discomfort to to stimulate creativity, productivity and focus.

The reason for all of this is the fact that their is no such thing as rational decision making. Dan Ariely (author of Predictably irrational) wrote the following in a recent Harvard business review: ‘Your company has been operating on the premise that people (customers, employees, managers) make logical decisions. It’s time to abandon this assumption”

Creating an environment of  ‘balanced uncertainty’ is therefore the biggest challenge moving forward.

The following is key to success:

• Transparent communication whereas the truth can be said, problems and mistakes surfaced and discussed as soon as possible. Jim Collins already referred to this as facing the brutal facts;
• Building trust, thus building an environment where openness gets rewarded
• Avoid or get rid of a diluted corporate DNA
• Offering a realistic challenge in order to stimulate motivation, creativity and innovation
• and above all walk the talk 

Are you ready to maximize the potential of your people?

• too much leadership creating a superior vision and taking decisions whilst losing the necessary sense of reality. Dragging people and companies unnoticed into trouble.
• too little leadership because leadership is too often linked to charismatic leaders. The CEO as the captain under which leadership the organisation is led to unrivaled performance.
• too little management who should be capable of managing the execution.

And where does entrepreneurship fit in all of this?

A lot has been written and discussed ranging from charismatic leadership, Level 5 leadership, transformational leadership,…. The characteristics of the so called must have leadership profile is a long list that is impossible to find in a single mortal human being. Marc Buelens (Vlerick Leuven Ghent management school) wrote in a recent column:  ”Leaders need to combine the charm of Kennedy with the vision of Branson, the stubbornness of  Thatcher and able to speech like Obama”

I suppose that most of us agree that the world and business in itself has become too complex to be mastered by a single individual. A lot of people tend to think that the CEO can make the difference. A comparison with soccer is in place since many analysis have shown that changing the coach during the season never contributed to major result improvements.  I’m pretty confident that the future will show the same in the vast amount of cases where the CEO had to leave the scene as being responsible for bad results. CEOs at the same time should better think twice before contributing superior company results to their mastery.

Even management teams are no longer able to provide all the answers in the same way as sales has converted into a team-sport. I’m seeing over and over again how management teams are trying to come up with all the answers themselves. As a result expecting people to change and behave differently without a need to change themselves.

I’m therefore convinced that the whole debate is besides the point. since everything starts with an undiluted DNA. The following picture shows the logical levels needed in order to release the full human potential within your organisation. 

What we need is management innovation which includes getting ride of industrial age practices. Typical to those ideas are central and formalized processes trying to influence human behavior. Converting people into machines leaving their brain at the door when coming to work. Resulting in managers fighting battles ad hoc, rarely solving the underlying causes. Fighting symptoms, they’re unable to create a scalable value chain and properly utilize the human potential of the entire team. This need to change in order to realise your companies growth potential.
Leadership must be attuned to the information age, where progress is stimulated and jobs are managed – not people.

When will managers accept that they can’t control nor own the knowledge inside peoples head. We talk about the knowledge worker age but managers typically behave inversely.

 You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”Gandhi”

Corporate DNA can be compared with human DNA in the sense that it’s unique and can’t be altered.  Corporate DNA is the sum of all  ‘unchangeable’ elements of a company which combined describe its identity and uniqueness at the same time.  It is all what remains fixed while the business strategies and tactics endlessly adapt to an ever changing environment. The corporate DNA consists of  3 components:

• First of all the ‘real’ core values of the company
  • Core values are the operating philosophies or principles that guide an organization’s internal conduct as well as its relationship with the external world. Real core values are the common denominator of the employee’s core values. Hence the importance of identifying them by studying and interviewing people in the organization in contradiction to most exercises whereas top management is defining their so called core values based on the strategy and whom they’re willing to be. An example  (Nemetschek SCIA) of ‘real’ core vales is:
    • The continuous pursuit for new ideas and innovation
    • Commitment and our involvement for the well being of our company
    • Loyal long-term relationship with all stakeholders
    • Hardworking yet forward thinking people
    • Our commitment to take full responsibility and living up to made commitments
• The core Purpose
  • The core purpose is the organization’s fundamental reason for being. In other words a written statement that identifies why the organization will exist for the next 10 to 30 years. It makes abstraction of the product/service offering. Some examples are:
    • Inspire people to move limits  (Nemetschek SCIA)
    • To solve unsolved problems innovatively (3M)
    • To make people happy (Walt Disney)
• Your Value Discipline (Treacy and Wiersema):
  • The value discipline are our behaviours and actions which ensure the delivery of our value proposition. Value proposition being the mix of products, services, price and payment terms we offer to customers. The value discipline is either Product Leadership, Operational Excellence or Customer Intimacy. One has to be the best at one of them whilst making sure to keep on delivering the ‘Olympic minimum’ on the 2 other disciplines. A good example in the automotive industry is to compare BMW to Toyota.  Another good example is Colruyt (Belgian based retailer) for operational excellence.  Trying to outperform the competition on more then 1 of the disciplines is unaffordable and always unsuccessful in the long run because it takes too long and costs too much money. Your value discipline is part of your DNA and should be in line with your core values.

It is of the utmost importance to know, track and communicate on your DNA. A diluted DNA is probably the number one reason for stalled growth and/or declining profits in a growth scenario.  Their are plenty good reasons to make sure your DNA doesn’t get diluted:

• A lot easier to grow your business because of the ease to get people aligned;
• Sharp value perception leading to more successful lead generation;
• People are self-motivated;
• No need for a lot of written down policies such as travel rules, work schedules, meeting behavior, email policies,….. because people are behaving  in a coherent way;
• Improved performance due to focus. i.e. people will not waste time and resources on improvements or idea’s to lower the cost of delivery if you’re  in product leadership and your price/performance is at an acceptable level from the market’s point of view. These resources should be spend in becoming even stronger in product leadership;
• …

Typical symptoms of a diluted DNA are:

• Managers managing people instead of the business;
• an increasing level of rules and bureaucracy;
• A lot of emphasis on motivation and programs supporting it;
• HR policies which put job experience above DNA compliance in hiring and retention;
• Spontaneous idea’s and improvement propositions which are totally random;
• …

Better results and less people issues resulting in less stress as a manager will be your personal advantage if you avoid DNA dilution.

Entering late in the buying cycle is probably the single most important reason. A project manager is taking the lead once an opportunity is in the closed minded phase (in some businesses when the RFQ/RFP has been send out). This means that all requirements have been gathered and translated into buying criteria. Therefore real decision makers and those faced with the business problem are no longer involved in the market research phase. They will of course come back into the loop at decision time but that’s way to late to build a meaningful relationship for this opportunity.

5 tips to help overcome the main obstacles:

• Research the power structure and contact the highest ranked person faced with the business problem:Marketing should influence all decision makers faced with business problems you can solve. See: how to influence key decision makers And the one with the biggest impact should be contacted by sales to make an appointment based on a value proposition adapted to the business problem you want to discuss. They will only accept an appointment if their ‘readiness to buy’ is far enough developed but not yet to the state that they’re already convinced to know the buying criteria the solution must meet.
• Speak their language: Sales people are often pushed down or don’t get access to them because they’re unable to have a value add business conversation. Decision makers are not interested in a product or technology pitch. Nor are they interested in knowing more about your company. Remember: Decision-makers believe they know the destination but they have a problem getting there.
• Understand the psychology: Your contact will probably have cold feet of introducing you higher up in the organisation. They’re not sales people and therefore be reluctant to sell the idea to their boss. Afraid of the impact in case of a wrong judgement or setting up an appointment with a sales rep that doesn’t speak the right language.
• Get agreement on value chain impact: Showing that the business pain has an important impact on other key people in the organisation will help you to get access even higher in the organisation. the reasons are:
  • You helped your contact to build the needed story to sell the appointment
  • You proofed that you understand and have experience dealing with the business problem
  • You proofed that you speak the right language.
• Negotiate access: You have to negotiate access if all of above has been insufficient to get access. Remember to check the status of the opportunity in terms of readiness to buy. All of above will probably fail if you came in via the project manger or buyer because the opportunity is already too far down the buying cycle. So if you came in at the right time you will get access when agreeing on certain work or commitments from your side that are of value to your contact in exchange for that meeting.

Closing tip: Be careful with your forecast if you put in opportunities without having access to the real decision makers. These opportunities will drag on and on in your pipeline. Quit normal of course since you have very little insight and control over the ‘real decision’.

It’s amazing how time flies when I see how long it took to find the time to finalize the second part.

Yet it was worth waiting since I’ve been involved in 2 change projects at the same time where I could practice my previous blog and can deliver this post with 2 recent cases incorporated.

10 must do’s: (Part II, 6 -10):  post with must do’s 1-5

• Build an experience sharing platform: It’s amazing to see how much information and experience stays underutilized and leaves the company with former employees. An experience sharing platform, ideally, managed my marketing is pivotal to leverage, study and optimize the best practices. Sales-marketing alignment is the immediate result. The platform consists of a small set of sales-ready deliverables which are kept up to date per segment and key-contact in the buying process of prospects and customers. Regular sales meetings with best practice sharing and assisted by marketing are the starting point. Ask your sales to send a blackberry style email with the summary of meetings (especially on pains, challenges and capabilities) and make sure marketing has access to that information in order to keep the best practice up to date.
• Facilitate market ready innovation: The information gathered during the visits by marketing (see  post with must do’s 1-5) and aforementioned internal meetings will deliver a wealth of information to help inform and educate R&D and product management on market needs and what they should be capable of doing. I’m still surprised to see how R&D,  product- marketing and management are limited in their view and understanding of the market because sales is translating customer needs in features themselves leading to the battle of prioritizing development on the product roadmap. On the contrary of what they think at a first glance, R&D and product marketing/management will be able to be creative and innovative to an unprecedented level because they will understand the native customer environment.
• Educate your internal customers: Increase the value of the marketing department by playing a pivotal role in all communication from and to the market. Keep the following up to date:
  • win/loss reasons by calling key decision makers per deal yourself a couple of weeks after a decision has been taken. Assemble those winning and losing buying criteria per supplier;
  • best practice per segment and key-contact and use it as a base platform to streamline interdepartmental communication;
  • prioritised market pain/capability area’s for which the product should be upgraded.
  • This will enable you to monitor proposed product upgrades and new versions in terms of competitiveness and hit-rate thanks to a better coverage of market needs.
  • It will also enable you to focus your external market education to a group of prospects who are seeking your leadership.
• Implement a lead nurturing program: You main mission next to the management of the experience sharing platform deliverables and educating internal customers is to deliver ‘real’ sales ready leads. The only ROI based approach is to start communicating with your targeted market on a continuous basis with ‘role-based’ messaging. Meaning language adapted to the specific role in the company of each of the different contacts involved in the decision making process. also see: necessity of lead nurturing
• Measure and communicate: Make sure you can measure most if not all of the marketing activities. It will help you to communicate progress on all these area’s. Some of the mentioned points might be quit heavy change projects and thus will take time, patience and continuous improvement. This is the best way to ensure a large enough budget to accomplish all of the 10 must do’s.

Have fun implemeting the 10 rules to be a topnotch B2B marketer and keep me posted on experience and/or challenges.